nine (and other numbers)
by sylph-feather
Summary: When Shinichi dies in the realest sense, he expects to stay dead. Granted, considering the fact he died as a cat showed that life wasn't exactly going his way. (OR: Supernatural, Halloween spin-off of Curiosity Made the Cat.)
1. 四 死

**This story branches off from chapters 75-81 of my fic Curiosity Made the Cat (CMTC as I shall be calling it). Specifically, about 3/4 of the way through chapter 81. **

**If you do not want to read it, it is fairly summarized here and is decently straightforward, though you may still be confused.**

**Welcome to my halloween AU of my crack AU, my friends.**

**xXx**

_In Asian cultures, four is considered incredibly bad luck, considering the similarity in its pronunciation to death across multiple languages. _

To say this story begins oddly is an understatement. Firstly, this tale does not begin at the true beginning; of course, to start at Shinichi's birth would be absurd, but perhaps to start at the moment at which his life became nine would be a good start— that is to say, he became a cat due to an absurd, clearly dysfunctional poison.

Now, Shinichi didn't believe in the whole _nine lives _thing, but he was aware of the odds of surviving something so likely to kill him without a trace, so to some extent he simply nodded, moved along, and continued to be a detective in his own body, leading to numerous shenanigans revolving around widespread belief of a certain cat as a chaos spirit— but ah, let us not get lost in summary, for there is one other oddity of our beginning, and that is that it begins with death.

Shinichi himself encountered death many times, so perhaps it is not odd to consider that yet another tale in his life has the first chapter of somebody passing. But ah, Shinichi himself didn't die often. Not at all, actually, considering the obvious.

Hence why this beginning is odd indeed, considering it _did_ begin with his death.

Sort of.

xXx

A knife glints under the dark new moon, the other hand holding a spray of minty poison.

_Insane, _Shinichi quantifies. _This lady thinks I'm a bakeneko and she's going to air freshener me to death. _

In another universe, things go different and Shinichi escapes scathed and alive. But with the dark eye of the moon staring down at him from a skylight, something different happened; Shinichi did writhe away, scrambled towards the lit lantern that ominously sits further down the table.

Unfortunately, the woman takes aim with the can, aerosol immediately flaming.

In this life, Shinichi's final words are _oh shit _as he is caught mid charge.

The lantern glows blue and the moon winks darkly, and that is all he knows before dimness.

xXx

...for the moment.

One life has ended, another started.

And the first words he heard are a sassy yet confused and worried, "glad you weren't caught in that, singed fur is a bad look."

Shinichi squints luminous eyes open to meet green ones set in a tan face. He blinks. Behind Heiji is a fire and siren lights.

Staring into the lit-by-embers blue, Heiji continues, "it was the janitor, eh?" At Kudo's concerned mouth-open, twisting of his muzzle, he cuts off— "yes, she made it out."

The detective frowns towards the flames. "They dragged her out, and found you with her." He glances at Shinichi. "I'm seriously not sure how _you _made it without burning," he says with a frown, then brightens— "but yanno what they say about gift horses."

Shinichi shrugs blandly, and closes his eyes, drained.

"What payment for helpin' ya," Heiji whuffs a chuckle as Shinichi blanks out again.

xXx

Later— Shinichi is unsure how much, enough that the sun is up— he blinks awake again. He looks down to find a junky little cat bed, looks to the side to see Heiji flipping through a book.

"Ellery Queen," Kudo jests hoarsely, laughing sarcasm. Then he blinks— he hadn't been wearing his bowtie translating his speech before this. He puts a paw to his neck, expecting someone to have outfitted him with it in his sleep, but finds _nothing. _

Heiji blinks at him, huffing dully at the joke, before surprised comprehension settles on his face as well. "Wait— yer' not—" he stutters.

"Did Agasa make the new translator smaller?" Shinichi awkwardly laughs, taken aback.

"Uh, no. He finished it, but we were waiting for you to wake up," Heiji explains, dangling the collar in his hands demonstratively.

Shinichi again places a paw to his throat, whispers words. No meows undertone it; his ordinary voice comes from the mouth of a cat. "This doesn't make any sense," he says blankly.

"The— the vocal chords and boxes—" Heiji gestures wildly. "—It wouldn't work," he reiterates.

"I must be dreaming," both detectives say simultaneously, then blink at each other.

"I mean, nothing changed," Heiji iterates— "what woulda caused ya to suddenly be able to speak?"

"Nothing," Shinichi agrees. "I'm going to sleep until I wake up," he grits.

"But _I'm _the one dreaming," Hattori insists.

Shinichi glares. "You do that too, then," he deadpans, settling back down on his pillowy bed.

In his dreams, there is blue fire and a black eye.

xXx

Only half an hour later, Heiji jostles him awake .

"Come back with coffee," Kudo groans.

"It didn't work," Heiji hisses. "Ya just started yellin' normally," he informs.

"So you're not in my dream and I'm not in yours and this is real?" Shinichi clarifies, shock startling him awake as good as coffee.

"Unless I'm still dreaming," Heiji says.

"Or I'm still dreaming and you're in my dream and you're just—"

"This is confusing," Hattori cuts off his hysterical rambling. "I think we can just assume it's real."

"But it doesn't make any _sense," _Shinichi reiterates harshly. Demonstratively, he punctuates his words with a hiss.

"To Agasa!" Heiji calls, holding a hand up in _huzzah. _

Shinichi rolls his eyes, but still echoes, "to Agasa," in agreement.

And so they go.

xXx

Agasa's initial reaction is simple, pure _shock. _

Demonstrating the uncanny ability, Shinichi simply opened his mouth and pointed it out rather than lay any groundwork— "hey, I can talk without wearing the bowtie, and that's _definitely_ not _right. _Please run tests."

Blunt, to the point. Typical Kudo.

After checking it was no prank— no call on a phone, no hidden translator, the like— Agasa stepped back with widened eyes and nodded wordlessly.

And so now, here they were, staring at x-ray scans that showed… nothing, really. Nothing abnormal, that is.

"This," Agasa pointed out to the scan on the right, "is an image of a normal cat's neck with its vocal chords." He pointed to the second, practically identical image, and said, "Shinichi, these are yours." The image changed as Agasa pulled up clearly distinct human vocal chords. "It's clear yours don't resemble these," he pointed out.

"So _how?" _Shinichi groused, talking in his seemingly impossible voice.

Agasa just spluttered, throwing his hands in the air ultimately in a gesture of _who knows. _"Your mouth shouldn't even be able to form the sounds."

Experimentally, Shinichi coiled his tongue around several words, paying attention to the way his jaw moved, the way his tongue touched his teeth, the lack of lips, and he frowned.

"My words _don't _get formed by my mouth," he pointed out, intentionally dragging each syllable out, exaggerating the mismatch effect.

"What the…" Hattori trailed off, frowning. "This makes _no sense," _he said, as was apparently their theme of the day.

A lull of confused silence reigned.

"Maybe we just shouldn't look this gift horse in the mouth, either?" Heiji concluded weakly.

"You can't tell me you're not _curious," _Kudo wheedled. He paused. "Don't say it," the cat groused as Heiji cracked a grin at the obvious follow up phrase. "_Don't." _

(It didn't matter anyways, really. Curiosity had already done away with him.)

xXx

It took the rest of the day of vigorous research and testing that ultimately left them more confused than ever for Heiji to begin to consider anything… _supernatural. _

He of course believed in such, unlike Kudo— but he also believed in science, believed in proving what was there if _possible. _

But he also considered the reports of the lady's rituals within; white cats previously slain there at some twisted idea of bakenekos and evil, ritual objects abound… and a black cat, laying in the midst of blue flames and coiled around the lantern that _started _the fire, dark moon perfectly framed above the scene from the window.

Heiji really didn't like questioning his survival, but _how did Kudo not get the least bit burned? Not even singed at all? _

But Heiji… Heiji needed proof to really think that. As much as the mystical _could _be proven.

A phone call.

"Hey, Ran-san, what were the tests you used to determine if uh, Conan was a bakeneko or nekomata or whatever? I think I may have one—" he said into the phone, only half-pretending to be nervy. Indeed, Ran had used supernatural tests to falsely conclude the human-turned-cat was supernatural the first time— but perhaps Heiji could perform them without the faults Kudo reported to him in a snickering voice.

"Oh! I used uh, some holy stuff— you can take them, I should still have all that— and ah, a lantern, and a salt circle." She paused. "Guess you could test it with the moon, too."

"The moon?" Hattori questioned.

"Well, they get power from it, so I guess you could watch it— but if it's evil…" she trailed.

"Got it," Heiji nodded, feigning seriousness.

xXx

It took but a day to gather various materials for tests— omamori, holy water, salt, and a lantern. Heiji knew he had to remain more discreet than Ran had, considering Kudo had jokingly played along with some or been confused enough to accidentally indicate a positive with her.

He started simple, simply lacing Kazuha's keepsake Omamori around his neck before waltzing in to greet Agasa and Kudo.

"Whoa," he said, eyeing the cat. "You look _bad." _

"There's no explanation," Shinichi murmured from the back of a couch. "None!"

"Why don't you just not—"

Kudo cut him off— "this could mean something bad! It could mean parts of me are somehow becoming human again!" He paused. "Even if it's _still _not anatomically possible, considering the scans," he murmured in a trailing tack on

Hattori blinked. "Isn't that _good?" _

"Not if my heart gets big and the rest of me doesn't, or something!" Shinichi hissed.

Heiji edged closer to the tense, haggard cat. "Freaking out isn't gonna' do much," he huffed, flopping on the couch Shinichi was sat on.

The reaction was instant on a shoulder brush with the cat's paw— Kudo's spine shuddered as though he'd been electrified, and he whipped his paw away.

"Don't shock me," he groused.

Heiji blinked, accepting that as a fair excuse with a shrug. _Test, though. Repeat. _

So he poked him again, keeping his finger there a moment longer. The cat flung itself back with a yelp. Hattori felt a bit bad.

"Are you sure it's not the other way around?" Heiji lied weakly, pulling away carefully, not wanting a third trial.

The cat opened his eyes, and Heiji blinked at the luminous, glowing blue contained within them. "I don't know," Kudo grumbled, ears flicking. _Unaware. _

Heiji inched away nervously, discreetly drawing off the omamori while watching Kudo's eyes fade as the cat settled back down.

_One last try. _

Omamori stored in the couch, Heiji reached out for his friend's shoulder blades. Shinichi gave him a weird look at his hesitance and for doing so in the first place, but Hattori gave a gentle stroke of silken fur.

Calm, painless. Proven.

Before Kudo could snap a _what are you doing, _Heiji explained, "ya look tense, man. Chill."

"Heiji, I don't know what's _happening _to me," Kudo hissed, voice cracking in an all too human way for looking like it came out of a dubbed over cat's mouth.

Heiji frowned. He couldn't imagine a statement of _I think I might _with an explanation of _you're magic, Kudo, _to be particularly well taken. He said nothing.

xXx

The second test was just… assurance, really.

A lamp, placed on the counter, lantern oil within. Heiji sat at the table, eating lunch, trap primed and waiting for the cat who would soon come and do the same.

When Kudo did walk through the door, he paused at the threshold and sniffed the air with eyes closed.

"Something smells good," he commented, voice dull, almost trance-like.

Without saying anything more, the cat drunkenly stalked over a few more steps, long tail furling and unfurling hypnotically. Clearly entranced, Kudo mindlessly hopped on the counter, then took a deep whiff and exhaled a content sigh.

He opened his eyes to reveal a bright glow before bending down to lap—

Hattori rushed over, snatching the lantern up with a nervous laugh.

Pathetically, Kudo leaned after it, pawing at his chest.

"Give," he moaned, standing up and stretching a paw out towards the lantern that Heiji held up high.

"Uh, no," Heiji answered, weirded out— before Kudo did anything, he whirled around to dump the lamp oil down the drain.

Hattori wheeled around again to see Kudo with conflict and confusion written on his face, previously bright flashlight-eyes dimming, no longer intense. "What…?" he trailed, tail lashing, ears pinning and paw coming up to his skull as though he had a migraine.

"I think yer' magic, Kudo," Heiji blurted.

Kudo blinked. "_What?" _

"Uh," Hattori enunciated, frowning. "I was supposed to wait— until—"

He was cut off by laughter. "Heiji, I'm _sure _there's a rational explanation," he deadpanned.

While Kudo rolled his eyes, Heiji snatched his omamori from the table, and tossed it in his direction. It skittered on the counter, sliding to a stop within Shinichi's reach.

Kudo stiffened, frowned at it. "There's a rational explanation," he hissed, body shuddering— but he didn't move, in denial of the pain.

"Touch it, then," Heiji dared abruptly.

"Rational explanation," Shinichi repeated shakily, shuffling forward, whole body straining and quivering.

He didn't reach the charm itself before he yowled and collapsed— worried, Heiji snapped it away, tossing it.

"It was just— some kind of—" Kudo started, stuttery and shaky.

"Magic," Heiji supplied, filling it in.

"Electric— magnetism— or something, or—" Kudo continued over him.

"_Magic," _Heiji repeated. "Kudo, how'd I touch and wear that thing no problem, yet ya react like _that_? The lantern made you act _weird, _what about that? How'd you escape the fire when ya were _right _where it started? How did you get your voice back?" Heiji paused at Kudo's working mouth before steamrolling on— "that lady used freaking _magic rituals _relating to magic cats."

"None of that stuff _exists,_ Hattori," Kudo insisted, but still eyed the omamori across the counter warily.

"You need me ta fill the lantern again?" Heiji groused, dangling it.

Kudo hissed and spat. "You're just filling it with— cat drugs or something," he concluded sloppily. "All of this can be _explained." _

"Mm," Heiji hummed, backing off. "Sure," he sighed, plopping a hand on the cat.

"Don't patronize me!" Shinichi snapped, ducking out of the way of his hand.

Hattori met angrily glowing eyes, and sighed. "Just look at yerself in the mirror."

Kudo blinked, eyes fading. "What?"

Demonstratively, Heiji tipped out his phone, bringing the camera app up.

"Uh," Hattori paused. "Get angry," he instructed weakly.

"_Get angry?" _Shinichi repeated incredulously, voice going echoey and distorted faintly. "I can't just get angry on _command," _he barbedly deadpanned, the continued, "and why are you being so _damn vague—" _

"Got it," Heiji nodded, tapping the _stop recording _button. He flicked the phone around, wasily playing the short clip that showed off a cat with a messy voice and glowing eyes.

"That's just corruption and the reflective lens all cats have," Shinichi groused at the obvious glow. "There's an explanation for everything, and I'm going to find it all."

Heiji whuffed. "Talk to me when you want it," he groused, kicking off from the table. "I've got school to go to," he sighed sourly.

"Bye," Shinichi hissed frustratedly.

And Heiji walked away, first to know and believe of Shinichi Kudo's _death. _


	2. 3 times over

_It's recommended you repeat an experiment at least three times for assured consistency. _

In truth it was not _entirely _fair to say Heiji was the first to discover Kudo's bakeneko-ness, considering Ran had believed all along. However she hadn't exactly figured out _Kudo_ was a bakeneko (not just _Conan), _not to mention that in actuality he hadn't been a bakeneko all along.

After Heiji left— departed from a snappish Kudo and a need to go to school— it was more of a slow development over the next few days.

xXx

Day three. Nothing of his illogical ability to speak has been quantified by science, still.

Shinichi has not stopped dreaming of blue flames and eyes of moon that race electric through him.

On this particular night, he blinked calmly into wakefulness despite the dream. He stared, surrounded by a blue wash.

Shinichi startled, jumping away from luminous blue. It follows him, shining— behind him—! He whipped his head around, only for it to shine there, too.

_No, not like that, actually. More like my eyes are flashlights. _He winks, closing one after the other, squinting to test.

_Going back to sleep now, _he hisses against the urge of _outside, moon, moon, prowl. _

xXx

He wakes like this two more days in his own household before sleeping at Agasa's and doing the same— doing the same in front of Agasa himself.

"Your eyes are _glowing_," Agasa informs him, jaw dropped.

"Tapetum lucidum*," Shinichi grits, squinting until the glow fades.

"That wasn't just reflection—"

"_Tapetum lucidum," _Shinichi hisses, deeply entrenched in glorious denial.

xXx

Agasa starts taking notes.

xXx

A week in, still nothing, and Shinichi becomes desperately blabbering.

Agasa stared into those glowing blue eyes as Shinichi paces. He began with reasonable mumbles— "my dreams have always been vivid and odd," Shinichi detailed, sleep deprived, "so it makes sense that this is just another," he rationalized.

More pacing. Shinichi continued to talk; he begins with tales of dreams in the past, varying from dreams he's had of himself living his _normal, human _life (Agasa pauses from admiration and curiosity of the glow to note the bitterness) but also speaking of odder dreams, one of nonsense, strange scenarios conjured up by his own active mind he uses normally as a weapon.

He began to talk about a dream of a sword and a thief when he stared up at Agasa with harsh lit eyes and murmured, "I dream about the moon, now."

"O-oh?" the old man stammered, taken aback, pausing in thoughts of bioluminescence.

"It calls with blue flames and cold," Shinichi said as though that explained it. He turned his gaze out the window of Agasa's study, staring at the twinkling stars and the crescent smile. "It looks pretty tonight," he mumbled in an almost trance, white fur softly catching light and his dark patches looking like bits of sewn void.

"It does," Agasa said, unsure.

With a nod, Shinichi hopped up, and through the window.

Agasa yelped, surprised— for Shinichi had not gone through the _open _window, instead through the window itself, ghosting through glass easily. Experimentally, the old man's fingers scrabbled at it, confused.

_Magic trick? Why? _After all, Kudo was not exactly the _type. _

But what other explanation could there have been, really?

xXx

To say Shinichi was in an odd state of mind was an understatement; moon-drunk and sleep deprived, he aimlessly wanders, shadows crawling at his feet.

He does this all night.

xXx

"Shinichi I think something is very wrong with you," a harrowed Agasa told him when he returned in the morning.

Shinichi blinked sleepily. "What—"

"You spent all night _out," _Agasa said, waving a hand this way and that to indicate a _who knows where. _

Shinichi frowned. "Thought that was a dream."

"No," Agasa said firmly. "Your eyes were glowing—"

"Reflective," Shinichi insisted.

Agasa continued over— "and you went right through the _closed window." _

Shinichi was silent for a moment. Then, he burst out— "has everyone just lost their mind?!"

Agasa tipped his head. "I know it _sounds _odd," he admitted. "But something isn't adding up."

"First you, then Hattori," Shinichi groused, then paused and added, "and I _guess _Ran, sort of."

"What?" Agasa asked, trying to follow the non-sequitur train.

"You think I'm magic or something," the cat scoffed.

"Magic doesn't exist," Agasa cemented easily. "But that doesn't mean something _isn't _odd," he reiterated. Carefully, he probed— "why did Hattori think that…?"

Shinichi grunted. "Something about omamori," he hedged. With a flick of his tail, Shinichi padded out of the room. "Going to get some proper sleep, now."

"Come back when you wake up," Agasa hummed absently.

xXx

Kudo did not— not intentionally, though.

"Agasa," he wailed outside the lab window open for his comings and goings (as well as ventilation). "I can't get in."

The scientist thumped over from the other side of the lab, eyeing the open window and cushion set up for an easy jump. "Ah, why not?"

"I just," he started, Shinichi's face pulling into a frown as he paced the sill like a caged animal. "_Can't_," he hissed, confused at the lack of logic and quantification.

Agasa eyed the salt that lined the edges of the window he'd placed to give Shinichi a hard time. "Oh?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

The cat hissed and spit and paced, not giving any answer other than sheer frustration.

"Just, ah, give me a moment," Agasa said, shooing Shinichi away. He leapt off the window obligingly, looking intensely frustrated.

Agasa wiped off the salt, blurring the line. "Try now," he instructed.

Shinichi entered.

xXx

Part of Agasa wanted to dismiss the incident outright as some "weird cat thing" considering that Ran's original test of _is this cat a Bakeneko _was "proven" in that cats will curl up in any circle contentedly, including one of salt.

But there wasn't any specific cat psychology relating to specifically to lines, and that was all that was; a simple line of salt, across the window.

_Test, _said Agasa's scientific mind, and so he did.

xXx

"Why are there lines all over your house?" Kudo groused upon being instructed to follow the portly scientist.

"I'm testing your…" Agasa trailed off, sweating, before loudly finishing, "spatial awareness!"

Kudo cocked his head doubtfully, but said nothing else, following Agasa through the various boundaries of his house.

_Blue tape, check, _Agasa mentally checked off as Kudo easily crossed the boundary with an odd thoughtful frown.

Similarly, clear and white tape got a check, as did the faint sprinkle of salt forming a broken, powdery line and the salt simply powdered on a piece of white tape.

But the full, thick line of salt spread out on white tape… Shinichi stopped dead, and squinted. He gave a grunt, paced, but didn't even attempt to cross the bound that Agasa had easily and without thought stepped over.

"Shinichi?" the man questioned.

The cat paced, squinting at the line as though it held a confounding mystery. "I can't," he gritted out. Once again, he did not even _try_; it was as though it was all an innate psychological inability.

Agasa easily plucked the cat up, lifted him to the other side of the circle despite Shinichi's struggling yelps, and set him down again. Nothing impeded him from doing so.

For a moment, Shinichi sat on the other side with glazed eyes, completely frozen and rigid. He blinked into awareness— then lifted a paw to cross back over only to wear that same angered and flummoxed expression before pacing again. "Now I can't get back over," the cat hissed.

Agasa scrubbed a toe over the line, blurring it.

Shinichi blinked, tenseness gone, and easily crossed it.

"This," he ground out, "is nothing."

"It _is_ something," Agasa debated.

"It's just— psychological," Shinichi gritted, in denial.

"That's something," Agasa laughed jovially.

Shinichi's face contorted into a glare, and he stalked off.

xXx

Shinichi was not _blind_. Denial made him more… hard of sight, in need of glasses. But he could still recognize the signs as present, even if he was intentionally squinting as to make it to blurry to read the blatant, supernatural text that was probably glowing.

Shinichi knew being obsessed with the moon was abnormal, and was particularly aware of the salt and glowing eye stuff being downright _weird_. But hey, if he squinted and cocked his head just right, it could just say _reflective eyes _and _weird cat habits,_ not, you know, _you're magic now_— because that was the last conclusion he would basically never to come to outright.

Of course, the next incidence forced him to perhaps consider the writing as _you're just losing your mind_. A fair and reasonable conclusion when one begins to suspect oneself of teleportation, honestly.

_Backtrack. _

It began quite simply with cat napping, which Shinichi (lately sleep deprived and thus forcibly grudging) had taken to a bit more often as of late. It was a simple matter of passing out on a bookcase and waking up on the desk, or other such nonsense.

It slowly escalated.

Slowly, Shinichi found himself passing out on a bookcase and waking up in the kitchen, and then the attic, and then from his own house to Agasa's, to Ran's, etcetera—

All of which he of course blinked at and scrutinized and concluded (reasonably, reasonable as ever) _sleepwalking_.

Until it was when he woke up to a yelp, blinking awake to the underside of desk he'd never seen before.

"What the hell?!" an Osakan voice barked as someone backpedaled away from the desk that held Shinichi.

"Hattori?" Shinichi questioned sleepily. "When did you get…" he emerged, then trailed off unsurely as he was greeted not by Agasa's or his own house, or even anywhere in Tokyo… but by Heiji's room.

"When did _you_ get here?" Heiji echoed incredulously.

"Uh," Shinichi intoned, slack jawed.

"I've been studying homework and then there's a _pop_ under my desk and I check to see if I dropped something _and there you are_," Heiji rambled loudly, almost distressed.

"Sleepwalking," Shinichi said weakly but still _absolutely, definitely_ reasonably.

"Sleepwalking," Heiji echoed, deadpan.

"And I'm going to go home now," Shinichi blankly intoned, curving quickly around Heiji's abandoned desk chair. "Bye," he grit out, making his fleeting, shadowy escape.

Heiji followed him to the door, darts after rambling about magic or some such nonsense that Shinichi (reasonably) blocked out.

The cat let his mind wander; _obviously not magic, obviously extreme sleepwalking, but why am I sleepwalking _and _oh I'm so tired I want to go home—_

He stepped into a shadow of a person, beelining for the train. He does not make it on the train, because once he steps out of that shadow his paws instead meet the hardwood of Ran's room.

She jumped from where she was studying, glancing upwards before her eyes warm. "Hello, Conan! Where did you come from?"

"I'm going insane," Shinichi concluded, breathless.

Ran's eyes widened at the voice, at the statement.

Shinichi came back to himself, covered— "I kid, I kid," he jests in that awful impression of mysticism that is "Conan's" voice he chose since Ran believed him to be a bakeneko (even before he thoroughly became one).

She settled down, an awkward laugh. "Odd joke," she injected, stooping down to stroke the panicking cat.

Shinichi still accepts _insanity_ over _magic_ though, and thus he reads the signs.

**xXx**

***Tapetum lucidum: the reflective layer behind the retina of animals like cats and dogs. It's what you see when you look under the bed and find your cat with demon-eyes. **


	3. 72 hours

_A person can go approximately 72 hours without sleeping before hallucinations begin. _

If anything, the incident where a confused Kudo randomly appeared under Hattori's desk only cemented the idea of supernatural abilities to Heiji. Kudo had clearly unwittingly simply _appeared, _brushing doubt off with that action.

Now there was really one task left— convincing him of his own supernatural… _ness. _Heiji of course could not be _assured_ Kudo was in fact a bakeneko and thus decided to refer to it in his mind in vague terms— but at least that held more surety than what Kudo could say about himself.

In the aftermath of the shock revolving around Kudo's appearance (and dash) Heiji considered it in his head. Quite simply… Kudo would refuse to believe it any way it was delivered to him, more liable to believe any number of improbable non magic solutions up to and including insanity.

Heiji didn't want to even _consider _what Kudo would do if he thought his brain, his most deadly weapon and useful tool, had turned against him.

_A Kudo without inhibitions. _Heiji'd already seen enough of "Catastrophe" to be afraid if Kudo genuinely thought his kind was compromised, or (worse) thought everything was some feverish dream— and those were certainly conclusions Kudo _would _come to before magic.

Hattori assumed Kudo would spend longer in the heavier denialist phase before concluding insanity outright, but Kudo was all for blunt conclusions.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Heiji, conclusions Kudo had _reached. _

xXx

"Agasa," Kudo said evenly, "I think I've lost it."

Said doctor blinked, leaning away from his work over Shinichi's results.

"I can take being a cat," Shinichi continued in a mumble, "but I draw the line at magic."

"There is no magic—" Agasa began.

"You're right," Shinichi cut off, "it's all just _mental." _Before Agasa could make any other insertions, Kudo breathlessly steamrolled, "because that's the _only _way I could blink and end up in Tokyo from Osaka in seconds. The only way I could talk." He paused. "I'm just, tired," he reasoned, "sleep deprivation can make you hallucinate," Kudo desperately explained to both Agasa and himself.

Agasa deferred to quite agreeance to ease the tense cat. "I didn't disagree," he easily said, motioning Shinichi over. "Sleep," he instructed— not unkindly, warmth glinting in his eyes.

Ordinarily, Shinichi may have protested at the tenderness, protested at the fact he'd slept so much already… but with dreams of death of fire and moons, and worryings of a variety of sorts, the cat had not had sound sleep and was not exactly in the state to put up a fight. Instead, he easily trotted over to Agasa's desk, hopping up to be greeted by an affectionate pet from the man.

For once, he let his instincts to bump his head against the doctor take over, and then dropped into peaceful sleep before he could hear Agasa's cooing.

Agasa continued to work in the background, checking and rechecking, researching and _re-_researching on just why Shinichi's eyes glow, on why he can miraculously and inexplicably talk despite biological limitations. The cat's breaths were even beside him, and he paid it little heed.

_Until. _Because in Kudo Shinichi's life, there is always an _until _or a _but _or some such nonsense.

To be more precise, this _until _was Agasa glancing up to find Shinichi being enveloped in velvet shadow unnaturally. When blinked, reached forward, Shinichi was simply gone.

Agasa, still half convinced Kudo was on some weird magic trick kick, scrabbled at the wood, at the floor— but there was no _distraction, _no poof of smoke that even the best of magicians used to cover any sort of escape route. No, Shinichi was simply there one moment, literally melted into the shadows the next. And that wasn't even considering the weakness of the trick explanation, because Shinichi was simply not that kind of person.

xXx

"Conan!" Ran yelped, waking Shinichi up.

He blinked awake, grunting an eloquent "huh?" The cat confusedly glanced around, finding himself at the edge of a night-tinted window in Ran's room.

"Is this a new power?" she marvelled, then grinned— "Conan, you're finally getting useful magic," she praised.

"Huh?" Shinichi echoed.

Ran rolled her eyes, rubbing her knuckles against the cat. Shinichi flinched away, feeling a bit dazed and overstimulated, and Ran obliged while explaining, "well, you weren't here, and then you were."

"That's normally how travel works," Shinichi snarked, sarcastic as ever, barely remembering to do the reedy voice of the character he created.

"Not in _seconds_," she replied easily, used to the brand of sarcasm Shinichi offered considering regular interactions with Conan and Shinichi himself (unknowing there wasn't an _and _in that equation, of course).

"Seconds," Shinichi repeated, eyes bulging and staring into space. _Complex auditory and visual hallucinations, _his mind ticked off.

"Yeah! It was like," she paused, wiggling her fingers around, "the shadows put you here, or something."

Shinichi flashed a frail but broad grin at Ran. "New power indeed," he observed, steps away from outright losing it. "I'm going back to Ag— _home," _he iterated, stuttering as he trotted towards the door.

Ran frowned. "You don't want to practice, or something?"

Shinichi blinked, turned towards her with a blank expression. His face cracked into a wide grin. "Why not?"

Ran smiled back, gentle and soft in the face of the knife edge curve of Shinichi's fanged mouth.

"Alright," she bustled around the room, leaving Shinichi to stare dazedly at the ground looking steps away from fainting. "It seems like it's shadow related, right?"

"Sure," Shinichi grunted.

She frowned at him, but continued, "so we should go outside," as she put on a light coat.

"Sure," Shinichi repeated in the same tone, easily trotting after her.

The pair exited the room and went down the stairs.

"Where you goin'?" a drunk Kogoro slurred.

"Running some errands," an irate Ran replied as she slammed the door behind Shinichi's tail.

Shinichi slightly shook out of his dissociative state for a moment, turning a gaze up at the angry Ran and feeling a bubbling chuckle— then everything went cold and distant again as buzzing thoughts took over again, drowning out emotion.

"Well, maybe you just have to like, imagine the shadows taking you again?" Ran said as they stepped out of view of the Agency, slinking around in the pristine evening.

Shinichi breathed in, breathed out. _If this works, that concludes it, _he huffed. _Not sleepwalking— either lucid dreaming or hallucinating; we'll see if this plagues me tomorrow. _

He focussed on the alleyway a couple of steps away, focussed on the feeling of stepping into that man's shadow he felt at the Osakan train station, and Shinichi stepped into the night.

He lost his focus immediately when he succeeded halfway, and he was momentarily surrounded by a great vat of _nothing. _Darkness oozed, swirled, and even though it was nothing Shinichi somehow knew it was also the thread tying _everything. _

Something like eyes turned towards him in the shade— and Shinichi knew those glowing eyes would snap him up he did not think of the alley _now. _

Just a thought of his destination, and he was there.

Ran clapped in the background, giggling amazedly, as Shinichi stared at the ground beneath his paws. He wanted to lay down for a long, _long _time, buzzing thoughts of _finally lost it, you're insane, _swarming around his head.

Instead, he chose the more manic energy route, cracked smile forming on his face again and causing Ran to falter at the deranged look.

"I did it," Shinichi said tightly.

xXx

"Hello, Agasa," Shinichi said, appearing out of the darkness of the desk.

"What the—" the professor began, startling backwards.

"I've lost my mind," Shinichi said, suddenly elsewhere in the room, emerging from behind a bookcase.

Agasa blinked. Blinked again. "Shinichi, either we _both _lost our minds, or—"

"What you're saying is just a complicated auditory-visual hallucination," Shinichi dismissed. "Or a dream."

"Or it's not," Agasa fought— but what could something perceived to be conceived by the brain say to fault that logic? The perfect denial.

"If this is real," Shinichi said, bordering on clear panic, "then I need medication or something." He frowned. "Do they make cats medicine for stuff like this?"

Agasa shrugged helplessly. "I'm sure the talking has an explanation," he said, "as well as the… whatever that was," he finished, refusing to call it _teleporting _outright.

Shinichi blinked. "Maybe it's KID," he concluded. "Maybe he's found me and is—"

"He doesn't even know you can talk," Agasa cut off as Shinichi began screeching KID's name, ordering the phantom to stop.

"Alright, alright," Agasa nervously attempted to soothe the breaking down teen. "It's uh, why don't we go back to the talking thing."

"Right," Shinichi said, focussing his mind. "My lungs, lips, and tongue could not support human language."

Agasa frowned— with each word, Shinichi's speech almost… slurred.

"I woul'en 'e eowble 'o eowlk," Shinichi spat out, each word more like a meow than the rest as he thought harder and harder. The next string was not even _close _to intelligible, causing Agasa to blink confusedly at the frowning cat that hadn't noticed it yet.

Rather than pointing it out, Agasa merely agreed with a short, "right. So you think that's a dream, too?"

Shinichi blinked up, thoughts torn away from anatomy, and agreed with a short, "yes," in perfect Japanese.

_It only works if it's instinctual, _Agasa realized, _too much thought into the logic and suddenly he talks like a cat should. _

Shinichi cocked his head at the professor. "What are you thinking about?" he snapped. "Just get me _something _for this."

"Maybe it's the poison," Agasa lied, "making you hallucinate things."

Shinichi gave an eager nod, happy to pin the blame on something else that didn't involve his brain failing simply by itself. "I didn't think about that. Would it be good to cleanse everything, then?"

"With an antidote, yes," Agasa nodded. Thoughts of _scientific anomaly _were pushed out of his head in favor of aiding Shinichi's clear mental breakdown in the face of whatever was going on— and if Agasa had to make him believe it stopped in order for him to quit it, he would; he hoped that Shinichi's logical mind would simply shut it all off with the presence of a solution, overthinking it into oblivion.

And thus, he whipped out the catnip pill, handing it over to the distressed cat. Shinichi gulped it down.

_I hope this works. _


	4. π

_You're being irrational. _

After fifteen minutes of Shinichi pacing and several minutes of _awful, awful _screaming, Agasa regretted his decisions. Yes, _after _the screaming.

See, Agasa was thinking of the antidote as something of a possibly (albeit unlikely) genuine cure to whatever weirdness was ailing Shinichi (if one could even say _ailing _in relation to _suddenly developing strange abilities_), but _mostly _thought of the thing as some kind of placebo to get Shinichi to _calm down _and at least _believe _himself cured.

What Agasa's _hadn't _really thought about was that the "placebo" he gave Shinichi wasn't just a _nothing_-pill, but had full and genuine drugs in it, catnip that didn't just make Shinichi transform but also _influenced _him in the mental sense.

...As evidenced by Shinichi's actions— he sat, human form, hastily wrapped in a blanket, with his entire form huddled.

"I've lost it, Agasa," he informed, voice edging on hysteria. "I'm all… _wrong_," he said.

Agasa gently approached Kudo, offering comfort awkwardly. "Oh?"

"It's not just _seeing _things that are impossible," Shinichi elaborated.

"It's doing things…?" Agasa trailed, tipping his head while considering the odd warping incident.

Shinichi shook his head vehemently. "_Feeling," _he shuddered. "Professor, I feel _wrong." _Shinichi did not say _I feel dead _despite that being the truth (and his feelings, of course, being accurate).

Agasa frowned at the almost-childishness, at the trembling, and that is when he well and truly regretted the catnip. "This should flush your system," he tried.

Shinichi shifted, shook his head, dug his hands in his hair, and just moaned.

"Er," Agasa shuffled, "maybe this wasn't such a good idea," he mumbled.

As he shifted, something porcelain white flashed against Shinichi's chest, through the blanket and his wrapped knees. Agasa blinked, and Shinichi seemed to notice too, stiffening.

One hand went to retrieve the object he'd unwittingly curled around, shaking.

"I'm not wearing any clothes," Shinichi noticed dully.

"You didn't seem in the state for it," Agasa said gently, awkwardly.

"Ah," Shinichi mumbled, flushed, then tugged at the object, freeing it from the blanket.

Catastrophe's mask stared back at them, more porcelain than plastic, eyes gleaming.

Shinichi stared at it a long time before he whispered, "what the hell?"

"How did that get there?" Agasa chorused, confused.

Before any other questions could be asked, the frowning, staring Shinichi started into action and violently chucked the mask across the room. It clunked against the wall— but didn't shatter, miraculously.

Agasa blinked in surprise, staring after it before shifting his gaze when a sudden gasp of pain came from his side. Shinichi clutched at his heart.

"The antidote is already—?" Agasa murmured, shocked, staring at the teen with now glowing blue eyes.

Undeterred and focussed, Shinichi shuddered the blanket around himself. "That thing _shouldn't exist," _he gritted in resolve, walking over to where it landed.

Agasa only sat in shock as he bent down, clutching at his heart and that blanket, and violently threw the mask to his feet. This time, it clearly cracked, ear chipping off and a line running down its face, splitting the mask's lip. Shinichi simultaneously doubled over in pain, clutching at his heart and screeching.

When he stood back up, mask conveniently in hand, he had twitching ears and slit eyes.

"Wait!" Agasa cawed as Shinichi growled and slammed the mask into the ground again with a clawed hand— again and again, painfully screeching while the transformation took more and more of a toll with each hit.

By the time Agasa tore Shinichi away, he was a panting beast of animal legs and hunchbacked anger, tail and ears twitching spasmodically.

"Why are you stopping me?" Shinichi hissed, turning his barely bipedal form on Agasa, eyes flashing.

"Why are you bent on destroying it?" Agasa questioned, pointing to the cracked, chipped mask.

"It feels like _all that," _Shinichi hissed. "All of the _wrong." _

"It's just a mask," Agasa quelled, not mentioning that it seemingly came out of nowhere. "And your emotional state is causing you to—" he cut himself off, gestured at Shinichi's form.

The detective frowned, pulled back and inspected himself— the coming-in fur, the tail, the ears.

"I'm not emotional," Shinichi complained while moaning contradictorily, legs collapsing into the best sitting position he could manage as he leaned against the wall. "I thought this one wasn't supposed to _do this," _he hissed, tugging at his long ears and thinking back to the slow-transformation faulty antidote that Agasa had made before going back to the old type.

"It wasn't," Agasa confirmed. "It must be your… activity," he said, steering clear of _distress _considering Shinichi's pride.

The pair sat in silence as Shinichi quietly denied the eerie synchronization of the mask smashing and the bursts of transformation and Agasa considered it.

"Maybe it wasn't that, though," Agasa admitted, frowning, strolling over to where the mask lay.

With an even deeper frown, the scientist tore his eyes away from the thing's gleaming eyes and stared intently at Shinichi, who stared curiously back as the professor raised a foot.

He brought it down, a quick stomp that made his old bones ache, and Shinichi screeched as though he'd been shot.

Agasa rushed over, leaving the mask with a hole in the center behind. Shinichi panted, yowled, as his fur grew thicker over his body, tail elongated and heels lengthened even more into a cat's.

He took one of Shinichi's now stubbier hands, feeling the rough pads. "Are you alright?" Agasa asked, providing another pillar of support in addition to the wall Shinichi had dug his claws into.

The teen's muzzle morphed into a vexed scowl as he retracted his claws from the wall, leaving behind a scrape. That he stopped leaning caused him to hunch over, lengthened arms making his hands brush the ground.

"I think it's the mask," Agasa said slowly.

"No!" Shinichi howled, voice more cat-like. "It wasn't _anything," _he insisted, curling up. "My heart's just fast and it's causing me to—"

"We both know there's a clear connection," Agasa cut off.

The cat panted, desperate. "No," he insisted, "that's not _logical." _

"No," Agasa conceded in agreement, "but it's true." And thus he concretely became the third to know, believe the oddities before the oddity himself.

"It's not," Shinichi insisted reedily, curling up on the floor, blanket pitifully draped over himself.

Agasa didn't back off— "how do you explain travelling like you did? The clear connection of the mask and your pain? The speech when you should be incapable?"

"I've lost it," Shinichi echoed in a murmur to the tile floor. "There is no explanation because none of that _actually exists." _

Agasa gave a _hmph, _stuck in the same problem of _how do you convince someone that relies on logic that everything is real when it's admittedly a bizarre reality? _

"Have any of your fever dreams _really _been this consistent, Shinichi?" Agada questioned. "Not to mention that I'm sure you _know _hallucinations aren't supposed to be this thoroughly consistent, either."

Shinichi shivered, coiling in on himself, wrapping his tail around anxiously. "But it doesn't make any _sense,"_ he insisted almost childishly.

"Once you eliminate the impossible..." Agasa trailed, leaving Shinichi's favorite quote hanging.

The cat shuffled, perking a bit in realization— "whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth," he completed slowly. Shinichi laughed hollowly, digging his paws into his eyes. "But this _is _impossible."

"Yet it's the truth," Agasa said calmly.

"_What's _the truth?" Shinichi snapped. "That Hattori is right, and I'm magic now?" he hissed in a venomously mocking tone.

"Maybe," Agasa agreed genuinely, throwing Shinichi off kilter, making him blink. "Magic is just unexplained science," the professor insisted.

Shinichi bared his teeth in thought, twitching, but couldn't come up with a good response. He deflated. "_Is _that the truth here?"

Agasa shrugged. "It's as good a guess as any."

Once again, Shinichi combed his paws over his face, digging claws into his hair. "This," he laughed wheezily, "is just crazy."

Agasa chuckled as well, giving a helpless shrug.

Shinichi gave a whuffing sigh— "guess I better apologize to Hattori."

xXx

Heiji was not expecting a middle of the night call from a hoarse sounding cat detective, but that was what he got.

"You were right," Shinichi's voice came through the phone, "and I'm sorry for snapping and all that."

Hattori blinked, shocked. "What?"

"I said you were right," Kudo snapped into the phone.

"About _what?" _

"The whole— m…" Kudo trailed off, and Hattori heard shuffling on the other end. "The whole… ma…" he trailed off again. "The thing with the omamori," the cat huffily settled on, seemingly unable to stomach spitting out another word_. _

"Magic?" Heiji questioned.

"Maybe!" Kudo snapped. "_Maybe," _he repeated insistently— except this time, he sounded behind Heiji _and _through the phone.

"I didn't want to come here!" Hattori startled at the voice right behind him, turning to find a slightly humanoid cat scrabbling at the shadows insistently.

"_What?" _Hattori yelped, jumping back.

"I was just talking to you, and—" Shinichi cut himself off with a frustrated hiss, tail lashing as he stood up and held the blanket around himself indignantly with an awkwardly draped paw. He waved the other demonstratively, then ran it down his face. "I really _am…" _he trailed off, sentence going incomplete.

"Magic," Heiji breathed with a half chuckle at the ridiculousness. "Shinichi Kudo, paragon of rationality, is—"

"Can it," Shinichi snapped half playfully, tail whipping.

"Callin' it like it is," Hattori insisted. "I woulda' thought ya never believed it."

"Believed is a strong word," Kudo corrected crossly. "_Supernatural_ things aren't real. It's just the best way to describe unexplained phenomena with language—"

"Can it," Heiji mimicked Shinichi's earlier cut off. "It's the same thing."

Kudo crossed his arms as best he could. "Agree to disagree," he offered.

"I think you'll agree with me, 'ventually," Hattori said with a flippant shrug.

"I'm going back, now," Shinichi hissed, making his way to the door.

"Yer gonna ride the train like this?" Heiji barked. "Why not, just, yanno…" he trailed off, making Shinichi's same wave that indicated teleporting before.

Shinichi looked exhausted and drained, beaten. "Fine," he gritted, still half in disbelief of his own perception as he stepped back into the shadows.

"Wait, you forgot your—" Heiji cut off as Kudo was swallowed up, waving the other detective's phone at empty space.

Two seconds later, a paw jutted through the shadows on the wall, plucked the phone out of Hattori's grip, and gave a little wave on its way out again.

**xXx**

**HAHA. NUMBER JOKES. I couldn't come up with a very good title for this chapter, but I hope you guys are liking the numeric connections. **

**Also literally one of the worst things to do when you're breaking down is take psychoactives, especially the kind that the catnip pills act as. **

**I feel like a lot of fics that revolve around magic and Shinichi don't really address how heavily he relies on his disbelief of such things, on his belief in the logical; I think he'd sooner come to the conclusion of trickery or even his own mind being faulty than come to the conclusion of magic being real. **


	5. one half

_Shinichi was the third and a half person to believe his own oddity._

Yes, _half. _And no, not because Shinichi was dubiously a human person (though that argument could be made from both the biological and supernatural perspectives) but more so because _believe _was too strong a term to describe Shinichi's emotions. Rather, he was just in a more _passive_ state of denial; instead of actively believing he was completely losing his mind and thus breaking down, he more accepted that _something _was amiss and he would ride this train as far as it took him out of some half-morbid curiosity.

Not exactly the healthi_est _mindset, but certainly healthi_er _than the former.

Five minutes after Shinichi had took his phone into the shadows and disappeared from Heiji's house (after his nice mental breakdown), Agasa queried, "when you say the mask feels wrong, what do you mean?" as he carefully held the thing in question, tilting it this way and that.

Shinichi's now thick fur bristled a bit, and he waved a hand-paw around, wrist circling. "It feels strong, but also like _me_," he admitted, tipping his head at it doubtfully and squinting, considering the strange feeling of the mask as a part of himself. "I'm probably wrong," he groused dismissively, disbelief rearing its head.

Agasa tipped the mask. "It does feel strange," he admitted.

Shinichi sat up. "What does it feel like to _you?" _

"Like I'm holding something electric when I shouldn't be," Agasa said, shuddering at the thrumming, tingly power that rushed up his hands.

"I'm sure _you _have _plenty_ of experience with that," Kudo drawled, tail flicking sarcastically as he considered the numerous failed inventions.

Agasa hummed, tipping the mask again to get a better angle of it. "Really, where did this come from…?" he trailed. "And _why_?"

Shinichi said something he did not say often: "beats me."

xXx

The second curious incident of questioning was not too long after; about a lazy forty-five minutes after, actually.

"Shouldn't the antidote have worn off by now?" Shinichi questioned, glancing at the deteriorated mask and his still large cat-person self confusedly.

Agasa tilted in his lab chair, drawing himself up from examining the chips of the porcelain mask. "Yes," he said slowly, "it should have."

"Huh," Shinichi stretched, spine popping. "Well, I don't feel any different."

"Huh," Agasa echoed, then opened his mouth up for further questions. "Why do you think—"

"I'm going to sleep," Shinichi cut in brusquely, pointedly coiling up, cat-like.

"Ah," Agasa hummed, questions boiling within.

xXx

"I'm still big," Kudo groused in the morning.

"Fascinating indeed," a tired Agasa agreed. "The antidote has not changed; I checked."

"It's just _me _that's changed," Shinichi filled in. He rested his chin on the ground again. "Inconvenient."

"You discover something brand new and label it _inconvenient?" _Agasa queried, half stunned.

"I'm _tired," _Shinichi whined, "and all _I _see is that I'm stuck like this, unable to go out," he explained pessimistically. He brightened a bit momentarily— "though maybe this could mean the antidote has hope after all," he elaborated with a grin. "Though with my luck—"

"I thought there wasn't any such thing as _luck_," Agasa half-mocked.

Kudo frowned. "You know what I mean," he huffed, large tail flicking irritably. "I think I have a right to pessimism, considering," he grumbled.

Agasa tipped his head in half-agreement, then moved on to a new topic as he stared at the mask that lay on his desk— "may I study this?"

"Uh, sure," Shinichi said, thrown off, then added in a hissed tone, "just don't break it."

Agasa put his hands up in surrender, nodding.

"I'm off, then," Shinichi huffed. "I don't know, I'll go— impress the cats, or something. The kittens will like that I'm big." He paused consideringly. "Or they'll be jealous."

Agasa gave a wave as Shinichi stalked out, focussing on the mask.

Scans revealed it was a simple porcelain, though the thing did indeed offput energy from some completely mysterious force, lending credence to the feeling of it being like touching an electrical outlet. Other than that, Agasa couldn't get much from it.

That was, of course, because ten minutes in, the thing had simply disintegrated into literal nothingness.

Agasa had spent the next five minutes stunned and trying to scrape for even powder— only to find actual _nothing, _the thing being wholly gone.

That is how Shinichi found him. A once again small Shinichi.

"Did you break it?" he barked, claws agreesively slicking out against the tile floor.

Agasa shook his head. "It just, uh," he waved his hands, demonstrating a _poof _motion.

Shinichi rocked back, blinked. "Huh," he mused.

"Into nothing," Agasa elaborated after a shocked silence.

Shinichi frowned. "_Nothing?" _

"Not even dust."

"That's—" Shinichi cut off the word _impossible. _"I've been saying that too much of late," he grumbled with a frown, batting his paws around in frustration. "Where did it come from, and why did it disappear?"

Agasa shrugged, more curious than Shinichi; as a detective, Shinichi enjoyed a good puzzle, but did not quite like _being _the puzzle even to himself.

"Want to take some more antidote and see?" Agasa asked, eyes gleaming in interest, itching to study the mysterious mask again.

"No," Shinichi shut the idea down sharply, leaning away. Without another coherent word, he grumbled as he stalked off.

xXx

When Shinichi entered the Kudo mansion, he did not expect the cats to be there, staring at him. He expected them to be there _generally, _but he did not think they would be in a row, eyes gleaming and fixated on him.

"Uh," he enunciated, tail flicking anxiously as he cocked his head, nonverbally asking for some explanation.

"Shinichi," the leader-cat verbalized slowly, eyes still glazed. "You've changed," she observed awkwardly.

Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko emerged, less shy, more bold. "You're stronger!" chirped Ayumi as the boys looked on with some jealousy and some awe.

"I am?" Shinichi meowled in confusion.

"You're all," Mitsuhiko paused, flicking a paw around and squinting, "weird."

"You're cool!" Genta barked, jumping beside Shinichi and puffing up as though to pose beside him.

"I am?" Shinichi repeated, staring down at what appeared to him as his usual self.

"Stronger!" Ayumi squealed again, headbutting Shinichi.

"You said," Shinichi drawled. "Uh, you can leave now," he directed to the rest of the awkwardly staring group.

The rest of the gathered cats stared for a moment longer, almost entranced, before slowly moving away, dull.

"That isn't right," Shinichi murmured under his breath at the robotic, synchronized actions of the group.

One turned around, eyes glittering. "What would you rather us—"

"Nothing! Nothing," Shinichi corrected, cutting off the monotone question. "Just… do whatever," he huffed awkwardly.

The cat stared at him a moment longer, eyes a bright yellow that displayed no emotion, before slowly slipping away.

Genta leaned into him with a scoff. "That was weird. They're being weird," he puffed.

Shinichi stared after the disappearing cat colony. "Yeah," he hummed. "Yeah they are."

xXx

Over the next days… things were eerily normal.

Shinichi went through his typical routines; he snuck into class with Ran, slipped around his house and studied or read. Normal life, outside of somewhat skirting around Agasa. And thus, another week progressed, Shinichi moved into the stage of _knowing denial _where he simply outright ignored the problem despite being unable to deny its existence.

_The problem's not a problem if it's not causing problems, _he paradoxically told himself.

On Saturday, Agasa grew fed up with waiting, though, and rammed into Shinichi's life by way of burst open door.

The cat flinched away from the computer.

"What are you doing?" Agasa questioned.

"Cases," Shinichi gritted. "Trying to find _them_."

Agasa paused. "I thought you had no leads?"

"I don't," Shinichi confirmed flippantly. "I also have nothing better to do," he growled.

"Sure you do," Agasa said, hauling the cat away from the computer.

"Please don't say—"

"Testing!" Agasa cut off.

Shinichi rolled his eyes.

"This could be the key to making you human for at least longer," Agasa dangled eagerly.

Shinichi sighed and relented (like he knew he would eventually and was thusly avoiding). The cat jumped off the desk, padding away from fruitless searching of unsolved "accidents" to distract himself.

xXx

"Ugh," Shinichi drawled out, big and long, pressing his face into the wall*. "This is so _stupid." _

Agasa made a questioning noise as he prepared various machines that he'd made to test Shinichi's oddities.

"It's _impossible,"_ Shinichi insisted. "I know we went over this," he hurriedly corrected, "and it's real. But how can we test the impossible?"

"Thoroughly," Agasa replied with a grin. "And we have a whole weekend to do so without distractions."

Shinichi groaned again, pressing his head against the wall once more.

(Little did Agasa know a _huge _distraction was coming up— but thankfully one that allowed testing and left Kudo happy, actually).

**xXx**

***cats do this to relieve headaches, or otherwise when they're sick. In non human cats this is often a sign of a serious issue. **

**Anyways :U shinichi is pretty resistant to accepting his "powers" and what have you, so this chapter was pretty slow paced. Going to get more into fun stuff soon! Yay! **


	6. 1412

_The distraction himself. _

That pleasant Saturday morning was spent in shadows for Shinichi. _Literally. _He jumped from shadow to shadow, GPS collar blinking confusedly all the while as Agasa hurried from computer to computer, murmuring "interesting, interesting."

"I can only do it between dark bits," Shinichi noticed, easily stepping out from underneath another desk, shaking the shadows that seemed to cling gooily to his fur.

"Interesting," Agasa said again, tacking down results and other data. "How do you control where you go?"

"I just picture it, kind of," Shinichi explained.

"Interesting," Agasa repeated— "can you go somewhere you can't picture?"

Shinichi squinted, tugged at the shadows and urged _random. _He shook his head.

The man frowned. "How far can you go?"

Shinichi squinted once more. "Good question," he chirped unsurely. "I mean, I went all the way to Hattori's—"

"Go further," Agasa cut off. "Aim for… outside of Japan."

Shinichi frowned. A brief thought passed— _what if something goes wrong and that's too far? _But Kudo was not much one for hesitation, and admittedly he was curious himself about the limits of the strange shadow-walking.

So he pictured the long shadows of… _too many options. _Shinichi's mind rapidly flicked through locations, before settling on an old favorite— Sherlock. _Reichenbach falls, _Shinichi imagined, painting his mind with the scene described in _The Final Problem, _jagged rocks and beautiful water spray, and stepped into the shadows.

More used to the dark, Shinichi stepped around until he felt spray on his fur— and like blinking without closing his eyes, he found himself at the beautiful falls, teetering on the cliff edge similar to the one described by Doyle.

He leapt back, stunned. Lush green moss pressed into his feet, and the waterfall spray pushed him back.

Shinichi breathed in, out; relished the view, the soft mist in the air, the pounding water.

Then he turned and oozed back into the shadows so as to not worry Agasa.

Shinichi came out of the dark and flopped to the floor.

"Reichenbach," Agasa huffed in a chuckle. "Interesting choice," he commented knowingly. He frowned at the cat. "Are you alright, Shinichi?"

The teen in question let out a grumbling noise. "Tired," he grouched to follow it up.

"It's only been—"

"Long distances drain me, I guess," Shinichi cut off snappishly.

Agasa thoughtfully hummed, then said simply, "well, I'm no closer to understanding what you can do." Before Shinichi could drawl something sarcastic as his half cocked grin and deadpan eyes suggested he would, Agasa hurriedly added, "but at least we know the limits!"

Shinichi rolled his eyes. "Can't go long distances, can't go somewhere I can't picture, can only go between shadows." He paused. "And those are only _some_ of the limits," Shinichi groused in addition. "Who knows what _other _arbitrary enforcements there are."

"Isn't it exciting?" the professor questioned.

Shinichi gave him a bit of a stink eye, but relented with a sigh of, "yes." He then amended huffily, "but it would be a lot _more _interesting if it wasn't _me _that was the _weird _thing."

Agasa shrugged. "Might as well live with it." "Mm," Shinichi hummed, unaware of the irony— after all, he couldn't exactly _live_ with _anything_ anymore; nobody had quite figured _that _out yet, though. "Well, I don't think I can do the thing anymore," he sighed, experimentally dipping a paw into the shadows only to get a little fizzle of passage before it simply scraped the solid surface.

"The thing," Agasa repeated with a frown.

Shinichi made a frustrated sound. "The thing," he echoed.

"It needs a name," Agasa said. "It's teleportation, after all—"

"Teleportation is impossible," Shinichi asserted surely. He backed off in pause— "or well, impossible in everything but singular atoms*. And that's not _really _teleportation."

"Who's to say that can't be expanded and applicable?" Agasa questioned, eyes alight. "Matter, moving from one place to another instantaneously," Agasa mused, "maybe using a plane we cannot comprehend, stepping over boundaries. Or perhaps you make your own fold in space, pushing at the fabric*—"

"Right," Shinichi cut off almost harshly, but mostly tiredly. "Well, you keep... rambling," he drawled, "and I'm going to go recharge."

"Goodbye," Agasa said distractedly, continuing to mumble to himself as Shinichi tiredly padded away.

xXx

Shinichi panicked, staring at the heated orange rage that flamed before him. A beam creaked, glowing with orange fire contained within, then collapsed. Sparks fluttered at him, singing his fur, and all Shinichi could think was _damn aerosol. _

The lantern beside him burned into his side as he jumped away from greedy tongues of flames that lapped at him hungrily. Black fur crisped as he yelped, mouth twisted in perfect picture of pain— before everything dulled.

Inside the lantern, a perfect blue orb caught his eyes, entranced him.

Then it grew, big, big, big, and _cold, _harsh light engulfing—

And Shinichi woke up, something gently poking him.

He bolted away with a yelp, hissing instinctively.

"Ah, sorry," Agasa said, holding his hands up in surrender, staring into harshly lit blue eyes. "Just ah, heard—"

"It's fine," Shinichi growled in a not-fine voice. He took a breath, squeezing his eyelids shut to drain the light from them, calming. "It's fine," he repeated in a more convincing voice.

Agasa nodded unsurely, easing away from hovering. "Feeling better…?" he trailed in askance.

Shinichi stretched, claws raking the windowsill. "Much," he hummed. "Sleep was all I needed to recharge after all," he purred.

Agasa grinned widely. "That's good, because I have good news."

"Oh?" Shinichi hummed, tail crooked in a curvy question mark, ears forward projecting an air of interest.

Wordlessly, Agasa passed Shinichi a newspaper he'd set down. Shinichi stared at the paper crumpled from a tight grip— _perhaps something Agasa intended to leave me before he found me… like that, and panicked. _That small deduction concluded, Shinichi tipped his head and read the words.

_KID Announces Latest Heist, _the headline announced. Underneath, a riddle:

_I will steal the Lazuli— _

_Waves upon a moonlit sea. _

_Come unto me; _

_I call thee. _

_Disaster. _

"He announced it this morning?" Shinichi tipped his head. "That's short notice for something tonight."

Agasa shrugged. "Spur of the moment?"

Shinichi chuckled. "He's an interesting combination of instantaneous and planned," he purred, tail swishing. "And clearly, he wants me, considering."

"Considering?" Agasa frowned.

"All of the rhymes end with an _e_ sound," Shinichi pointed out. "What's another word for disaster that ends in _e?" _

"Oh!" Agasa exclaimed. "Maybe we could test the mask with this," he suggested. "Report back."

Shinichi grinned, oddly wolvish. "I have some tricks of my own to show him," he hummed, mischief sparking in his voice.

Agasa shrugged, confused by the vexing relationship of world class detective and thief, but ultimately curious to get a field run for Shinichi.

xXx

KID heists were an elaborate dance, a this and that sashay under moonlight from the ocean (as announced, of course). KID, of course, makes the first step, an elegant swirl onto the dance floor with his partners smoke and mirror, cape flitting behind him.

The taskforce are clumsy partners, the crowd that laps the edge of the stage like waves; few make it up to the dance floor even, and none can truly compete; in the transition of clever fox-trot and salsa, they trip over their own feet, collapsing into KID's trickery and allowing him to simple swish away.

The phantom grows tired quickly— he came for the gem, but he truly meant to summon a specific partner with equal cleverness and footwork able to match rhythm. To see the taskforce is like slapstick. It is humorous, but not the goal of a stage dancer (or magician, to keep from getting lost in metaphor).

_Ah! Lo! _

Catastrophe arrives with a porcelain grin. He is not as dramatic as the phantom, despite their names of _ghost _and _dramatic disaster _implying otherwise. The cat sweeps on stage with a subtle ooze of shadow, making the task force look like idiots with the casual ease with which he joins KID's beat.

KID's grin widens and sharpens to match Catastrophe's, and banter begins; their own version of a bow, an offered elbow and swishing hand to motion _let's dance. _

"Fine night, isn't it?" Catastrophe purrs, circling. KID swears his long coat tails swish like a satisfied cat.

"Indeed it is, Monsieur Gaton," KID plays back. "Nice trick with the shadows. Inspired?" the phantom questions, half jibing and half genuinely curious as he disappears and reappears at the end of the hall in a more flashy puff than the shadows the detective used.

"Something like that," Catastrophe deflects easily; step, step on the dance floor. The moon glints on his mask from a window as he darts, and KID stares into those almost-lifelike blue eyes.

"Mm," KID purrs, vaulting down stairs. "Can you jump like a cat?" he chirps from the bottom.

If anything, Catastrophe's porcelain grin goes wider— and it is like blinking but _Catastrophe _is the one blinking.

"Yes, but I've got a better way," a saccharine voice comes from the corner.

KID whirls around to see Catastrophe leaning there, and bolts; dance away, frightened white rabbit, for the cat looms.

"Impressive," KID laughs, half genuinely impressed and half nervous.

More traps; even more than normal, Catastrophe is able to slide and sidle, twisting around them with grace and a fixed grin.

"Why am I here?" Catastrophe asks— _too close too close,_ KID hops away in surprise, springing like prey away from the smooth mask as he laughs nervously.

"Because you chose to be?" KID chirps, tokenly irritating almost on instinct. He amends when he feels an air of drawling sarcasm just from the tilt of his dancing partner's head— "a witch suggested you come, actually."

Catastrophe paused. "A witch," he repeated, sounding stunned. He scoffed— "witches don't…"

KID waited for the trailing to be concluded just so he could be smug.

Catastrophe cut himself off, though, sighing and giving a tired laugh. "You know, with all that I've done, _why not?" _He paused. "So this _hypothetical _witch," he clarified, "what did she say?"

"I mean," Kuroba hummed, reaching for the lazuli gem (Catastrophe stood looking only half tempted to stop him), "she said a lot. And a lot of it is just nonsense, really."

"Get to the point before I decide to stop you," Catastrophe cut in, laser focussed on KID's spidering hand.

"Like you could stop me," KID scoffed— only partly confident in that statement, as with Catastrophe's new tricks he felt very much under the cat's paw. Before the maniacal detective made good on that statement, KID snatched the gem, fiddling with it an examining it as he elaborated— "she was actually clearer than usual when she warned me about you."

Catastrophe, who looked ready to pounce at the snatch of the gem, straightened. "_Warned?" _

"Right?" KID laughed. "I don't think I'd need to be warned for you; I just wanted to check," he purred. "You still like to play with your food too much, after all," he said, and then dropped through a trap door to leave a cursing cat-detective behind. In his mind, he added _like you'd do anything if you truly caught me, anyways, _and laughed some more as he ran amongst passageways.

Kuroba assumed he'd lost the cat; he had ran before Catastrophe had seen him, after all, and it had been several minutes since the cat pulled his shadowy trick (that Kaito had yet to figure out).

Just when he was about to celebrate, he felt a cold tug at his chest. It was not unpleasant, but it was _weird. _It felt like someone was tugging at his soul, using the threads to pull themselves up— and KID turned around to see Catastrophe doing just that, emerging from his own shadow.

He yelped, jumped back, and the detective lurched forward too. Catastrophe peeled himself out of the shadows, clutching at an apparently crumbling mask with a faint "ugh." After a pause, Catastrophe brightly observed, "well, guess that works on picturing people, too!"

"What?!" KID barked. He paused, then began to ramble— "with your half joking and what you look like under the mask I kind of thought you may be a little magic, but I didn't expect _this." _

"Maybe it's just a trick," the cat defended.

"I'm a pro magician," Kaito pointed out cockily, "I know tricks when I see 'em."

"Mm," Catastrophe huffed, half relenting and still seeming tired from the shadowy move he pulled earlier.

"Anyways, I really got to check this," KID purred before tossing an easy flash grenade towards the detective as he mock saluted.

Catastrophe gave a yelp, curving claw like hands up to his face— _more claw like than before? _KID had no time to question as he darted away, silvery cape glinting in dim basement lights as he ran towards the exit.

Despite a multitude of pre-planned traps, Catastrophe did not catch up until Kaito had reached outdoors, banging the heavy metal door open loudly behind the phantom.

Kaito worriedly turned around at sounds of huffing and shuffling, sounds not befitting of a creature as graceful as Catastrophe. He found a beast clutching at a half-crumbled mask, features awkwardly between human and cat— stooped spine, peach fuzz coated tail, slender paws.

"You look weird," KID flippantly commented, rolling the blue gem between his fingers easily and taking Catastrophe's appearance in.

Catastrophe makes an offended noise, but does not dispute the statement. Before he can fire off any rebukes (perhaps "you don't exactly look ordinary yourself" or some other jibe at KID's outfit), something _else _happens.

Out from red, a third dancing partner appears behind the masquerade cat. Easily, Akako emerges, plucking Catastrophe's mask from his grip during his surprise.

"Oh," Kaito says when he sees a line of suddenly glowing artifacts edge both their perimeter. "You set this up, huh?" he asks.

She grins, and their stage moves, the dance changes, spotlight gem useless and forgotten.

**xXx**

***Actually true. Quantum entanglement is "teleportation" in that information is transmitted across a vast space without connection (at least, like we perceive). Atoms that are entangled respond to actions done to one another lengths apart, which is incredibly fascinating and insane. **

***yes, I stole this explanation of Wrinkle in Time and applied it to space. **

**yaaaay something something cliffhanger. I went experimental for part of this chapter— do you like it? **


	7. 1 AM

_Midnight to 1AM is often credited as the witching hour; the dead of night when magic is strongest. _

The lapis lazuli gem was carelessly forgotten by Kaito; after all, it was not Pandora, proven by the moon flashes of windows during the chase, and after all there were bigger… _finny things _to fry.

Namely, Akako; she had hijacked their dance, turned it uncomfortably deadly— now they twirl amongst fire, and Kaito would greatly like his cape not to catch (metaphorical) flame.

Unfortunately, Catastrophe seemed... rather unaware. KID looked into his face— odd and half cat, not exactly a pretty sight— and it indicated curiosity mingled with confusion.

The cat-detective took a step towards the boundary, and KID instantly stepped into a flurry of motion, cape spinning as he shouts a "don't!",

Catastrophe easily stopped, confused looking again, tilting as KID's unnecessary lunge came to a _totally graceful _end. "What is it?" he asked, frown coloring his tone.

KID backed off, monocle shining and shadows flitting across his face mysteriously once more, persona restored. He opened his mouth to interject an answer—

Only to be cut off by the witch herself with a snarked, "I'm surprised you do not recognize high magic, considering."

Kuroba could half imagine Catastrophe giving a confused blink as he stiffened up. "Considering?" he echoed Akako, head tilted just-so.

Akako's eyes narrowed. "He couldn't have lead me astray."

The detective did twitched vexedly, looking to Kaito as though he could explain; KID just shrugged, playfully confused to hide the real feelings of being threatened and utter confoundment.

"You _are _a bakeneko," Akako says, as though confirming it to herself and in askance of Catastrophe.

KID expects a guffaw and perhaps an "_of course!" _from Catastrophe, or some vague "_maybe." _He did not expect a frustrated, "this again?!" said in a voice that was not the same pitch as Catastrophe's ordinary tone (in fact, it sounded greatly like his ordinary voice— Kaito filed that away to think on). Catastrophe seemed to realize the shift, awkwardly shuffling and frowning in a way that made Kuroba suspect it was a mistake, before he frustratedly griped, "listen, I don't know who you are—"

Akako cut him off with rage. "I am a witch of the—"

"Now she's _never _gonna stop," KID groaned, cutting off the cut off.

Catastrophe cut back in, shaking his head. "Pretend I don't know _anything," _he groused, "and explain."

"Akako laid some kind of trap using me to lure you here," Kaito said, narrowing his eyes at Akako. "I thought we were on… _moderately good _albeit odd relations, but I guess—"

"I do not want to _harm _him," Akoko rolled her eyes. "A new magical creature is ever so rare," she chortled with mischief and ill intent. "And that's why I have to have him first."

Kaito and Catastrophe shared a worried look.

"You want to…" Catastrophe trailed off, and KID could feel the discomfort as he echoed, "_own _me?"

Akako looked at them with a _duh _expression. "I'm the first witch who's tried, I see," she purred. "What power you'll be able to give, what knowledge, what favors you will do for me…" she hummed, thrilled. "And you don't look awful fully human, either," she concluded.

Catastrophe writhed in discomfort, muzzle opening and closing before he settled on, "and if I say no?"

"As if you had a choice," she trilled, clutching his mask.

And with that, the barrier lit up a more violent red, light arcing upwards.

"Alright," Catastrophe said, then repeated, "alright."

He paused, staring at the arcing lights in half shock, then leaned over to KID.

"I'm leaving," he groused, tugging at the cape and interrupting KID's plotting of escape routes.

"What—?" was all Kaito got out before he was drenched in chill and darkness.

If it were not for Catastrophe's dug in claws tugging at his cape, Kuroba may have been stuck _wherever that was _forever. He broke through the other side with a wheezing gasp at the warmth and (comparative, relative) light.

"What was that?" he gulped, looking around— the pair were back to looking down over KID's trap door to the basement.

"Er," Catastrophe panted, as though unsure what to call the thing and too tired to say much else, and KID turned around to face him— _and oh, oh— _

He faced what appeared to be an abomination, more so than before; Catastrophe's cat like features had overtaken more parts of him, granting him large ears, more of a muzzle, and awkwardly stretched limbs. Really, _all _his proportions looked awkward, not built for existence.

"You're weird," KID observed.

"Understatement," Catastrophe huffed, sounding drained as he leaned on a lanky arm.

A moment of peace was had.

Catastrophe interrupted it by yelping, clutching at his heart.

"What?" KID barked, lunging over to him. Shadows writhed from the ground, surrounding Catastrophe's form, tugging.

More insistently, Catastrophe pulled at his heart, groaning. "Something is—" he moaned, leaving the statement unfinished as he yanked an arm out of clingy, oozing shadow.

KID grabbed him, tried to pulled him up to get out; but it was like he was sinking in a mire, arms stuck and more following, pooling into the ground, into the shadow.

KID pulled at Catastrophe, dragging his arm up as he sank further, desperately twisting away from the shadows— then—

KID pulled at nothing.

xXx

Shinichi awoke to another murmured, "interesting," this time in a feminine tone, and thought _I am really starting to hate that word. _

The girl— Akako if KID were to be believed, and a witch if she was to be believed; Shinichi believed the former a good bit more than the latter— paced around as Shinichi took in his surroundings. She completely ignored him as he stared at the relics on the floor, at the hanging lantern, at the cave like room.

"I'm so sick of rituals," Shinichi groaned, letting his head thunk to the floor.

Akako grinned at him, snarky and cruel. "Your mask is interesting," she hummed. "Disintegrating based on your power level, hmm?" she purred. The girl passed it to her other hand, looking into it with a keen eye that made Shinichi uncomfortable (or, at least, even _more _uncomfortable than before). "It's alright if it does," she informed him, twirling something almost invisible between her fingers, "I already bound you with something else."

Shinichi stood up weakly, snarl building in his throat.

"Feisty," she hummed, then tugged at that invisible thing— a thread shimmered blue, leading directly to Shinichi, connecting to a now firey and visible collar around his neck. Shinichi collapsed in a pant at the electric pain, collar and thread once again faint as fishing wire.

Subtly, he reached for that shadowed place— only to get another zap that left him hissing and choking.

"Don't," she commanded simply, and the cord shimmered and whipped.

Shinichi didn't do it again. Shinichi _couldn't _do it again, despite immediately and foolishly trying again.

"What?" he stumbled out unsurely, desiring _so badly _to reach the shadows— but something within him acted as a wall, an insurmountable _do not. _

"You're mine now," Akoko said in an obvious way. She rolled her eyes. "I had to get you before you wisened up," she purred.

"Why?" Shinichi asked, more general than anything. "And also _how?" _

"Magic," she huffed in answer to the second question. "You really are new and stupid, aren't you? I _almost_ feel bad." She paused, then seemed to deem it alright to answer the first question despite Shinichi's huff of disbelief at her previous answer. "As for _why, _well, do you _know _how rare bakenekos are nowadays?" she lamented. "_Normally _I just summon things and get things over with," she hummed, "but having _you_ will be a real—"

"You just want me as a show off pet?" Shinichi extrapolated, baffled.

Akako opened her mouth as though to deny it, but ultimately shrugged. "Among other things," she clarified.

"That implies a yes," Shinichi hissed venomously, rolling his slit eyes. "And if I resist…?" he trailed, mirroring his earlier question.

The witch tugged at the leash, causing Shinichi writhe in the collar of flames. "As if you have a choice," Akako echoed.

**xXx**

***fun fact the belief in witching hour supposedly has to do with the way melatonin works, as its release throughout the night can cause more vivid dreams, hallucinations, etc. **

**What? An actual plot, in my fic? Whoa. And it's thickening— double whoa. **

**Enjoy, I guess?**


	8. in deep 四

"_Four" or __四 __is pronounced "shi." It is also (as covered before) often related to death and bad luck in Asian cultures, due to "death" or __死 __also being pronounced as "shi." _

**Tw gore, tw vomiting. **

"Now," the witch (_and maybe she _is _a real witch, _Shinichi conceded) said, leaning forward from some, "tell me about yourself?"

He cocked his head. "Why?"

"Don't ask questions," she instructed, narrowing her ruby eyes as they glow under the light of dreaded thread. As Shinichi hisses in pain, she seems to reconsider the order and its stupidity, quickly saying, "actually, do ask questions," immediately flicking the leash back.

"Ok," Shinichi growled, staring at the ground and panting. The great beast shuffled, flopping in exhaustion defeatedly. "Ok," he repeated, more sarcasm.

Akako looked down at the large cat, seeming half tempted to order him something along the lines of _no sass. _Shinichi went off into his own mind for a moment, considering being unable to voice voice sarcastic, caustic observations, and he deliriously laughed at the thought of _maybe I'd explode. _

The witch grunted at the wheezing cat, tugging the thread— though not burning it, thankfully— to tug his head her direction. "Considering you seem to have existed in human form _before _I felt you magically, I'm curious," she hummed in latent explanation.

Shinichi shot her a deadpan look. "Maybe I was magic all along," he said simply, punch-drunk grin stretched upon his face, catnip making his judgement _not great._ "Ever thought of _that?" _he followed up.

Akako considered it, ruby eyes glittering, before shaking her head. "You don't conceal your presence well, so I would've felt you before, and you don't seem to know _anything," _she paused and chortled, "or even fully _believe _in magic. No, kitty, this is something else." The leash flicked. "_Tell the truth to all questions," _she commanded, repeating her question under his screams.

Shinichi remained silent, sassily placing one paw over the other and flicking his tail while looking away with a closed mouth, picturesque cat.

"Answer all my questions," was the next order, but hey, such was good while it lasted.

"It's because I'm a human originally," Shinichi said through a stiff jaw he'd failed to force shut.

Akako blinked. "What?"

"It's because I'm—"

"I know what you said," she groused, and the cat gave her an upturned look that said _I know you know, and I'm just being difficult. _"Elaborate."

Not phrased as a question, Shinichi once again pulled the _not answering _pose.

"Elaborate?" Akako growled, making a point of lifting up the end in frustration.

"Elaborate?" Shinichi repeated, once again deciding to be difficult— "I can elaborate on _anything," _he purred, "did you know that the superstition of witching hour* is actually from the release of mela—"

"Enough!" Akako gritted, choking Shinichi again with flames. He grinned through it. "Why are you making this difficult?" she hissed.

"It's who I am," Shinichi answered simply, vaguely, not exactly untruthful.

"Why are you a cat when you should be a weasel?" Akako gritted.

"I hope that was rhetorical, because I don't have—"

The witch leaned back into a chair, red eyes harshly lit. "Yes," she said slowly, "yes it was." She massaged her temples, then laughed— "you are just a lowly beast—"

"—Rude," Shinichi interrupted.

Akako continued over him in a gritted voice, "and how typical it is of a bakeneko to attempt to get under my skin."

"Well I'm not a bakeneko, since those don't exist," Shinichi insisted dully.

"_You_ don't exist?" she prodded.

"Clearly I do," Sbinichi hissed back, "I'm just not a stupid lamp-cat."

Akako blinked, a bit dumbfounded. "So to clear this up, you… genuinely don't believe in magic?"

"Nope," Shinichi answered, popping the _p. _"Magic is just unexplained science combined with superstition and tricks of the mind."

Akako had half a mind to fly into a rage at that insult, but it was quelled by how utterly ridiculous the situation was— a magically bound magical creature sitting in front of the magical witch and trying to convince her that _no, magic isn't real. _

Shinichi rolled his eyes at the consequential guffawing chortles.

"How do you explain _any _of this?" Akako drawled with an air of superiority and joking interest.

Shinichi would have flushed were he not furred. "I'll figure it out."

"Mm," Akako hummed, eyes glinting. "I'm sure you will. Why don't you _try _to explain any of the phenomena tonight, mm?" Akako trilled, making sure to be specific and lilt her phrase into a question to force an answer out of the cat.

A moment of silence— not irritating silence, but clearly a thoughtful quiet as the cat's mind worked. "Well, I could be having a very detailed hallucination," it sighed, "but I already ruled that out due to consistency and time," it informed her. It started again— "I could be…" it trailed off, squinting, cocking his head. "I'll figure it out," it grunted stubbornly.

"That just means you don't know," Akako pointed out cockily, long nails drumming her desk satisfactorily. "Say it," she hissed, almost venomous; she didn't wait for obstinance to flare the leash this time.

Shinichi gritted his teeth together, grinding fangs, but his mouth still slid open— and then he grinned. "It," he hummed cockily. Say _it. _

Akako looked ready to burst. The leash flared, and she instructed him, "bow down at my feet and say that you don't know!"

Shinichi tried to tamp down the urge shakily as he walked over, but still ended bowing angrily, long limbs twisting into a tense arched form. He smiled at the ground. "You don't know."

Akako kicked him from her chair, sending his bowing form tensing and aching before Shinichi (forcibly, embarrassingly) straightened back into the arch at her feet. "Admit it," she hissed, then took a deep breath and leaned back. "You're good," she told him with a sigh, squinting. "You really _are _a yokai, getting under people's skin with your tricks," the witch complimented.

Shinichi tilted his eyes upwards, deadpan look on full force. "Maybe I'm just like that _without _magic," he hummed with a purr.

The witch rolled her eyes. "Maybe that's why you became a bakeneko," she chortled. "How _did _you die, anyways?"

Shinichi stilled, then quivered a bit— "_die?" _

"You had to have died to become a yokai like this, if you were alive before," Akako elaborated. "Especially bakeneko, being cat spirits born of violent deaths. You still haven't answered."

"I didn't die," Shinichi insisted shakily.

"I think you did," Akako jibed back. She rolled her eyes, rephrased the question— "how _could _you have died?"

Shinichi shook in his bowing position. "I didn't die," he repeated, low growl. But that was not enough to sate the rephrased question; holding back words was like holding back vomit, and they bubbled up without his consent. "Some lady tried to kill me in some new moon ritual," he explained unwillingly, "she ended up burning jwe whole house down, since she sprayed at me with aerosol," he finished.

Akako leaned in from her chair. "Open your eyes and look at me," she ordered, and Shinichi complied, straightening our at the first hint of fiery pain. She grinned, pleased. "They're glowing."

He squeezed them shut. "I didn't die," he hissed.

"What a way to go," Akako continued over him. "I suppose if that lady believed you were magic, that only ensured your chances of becoming so, too."

Shinichi cocked his head at that.

Akako cackled, explaining, "if people believe something to be magic, it often will become so."

Shinichi thought of his tricks with Ran, with KID, with the general public as a whole with Catastrophe. He groaned.

"Was that an admission that I'm right?" Akako queried.

"Maybe," Shinichi snapped vaguely.

"Considering you didn't say no," she trailed, satisfied.

Shinichi snapped at the ground angrily, wordlessly baying at invisible chain.

"It's alright, kitty," Akako simpered. "I'll prove it to you."

Shinichi straightened up from his bout of rage, glacially calm once more now that curiosity of a mystery was at play. "If I haven't believed anything so far, how do you plan to get me to believe anything _else?" _he pointed out coolly.

"This is a bit big to ignore," she vaguely explained, rummaging in her desk. "_Stay," _she flicked the leash. Shinichi obediently stayed still despite his shaking desires to lean in and see, or to get away from that threatening tone. "Good pet," Akako satisfiedly praised, sending uncomfortable shudders down Shinichi's spine.

She turned around with a glittering gold rod with a snake coiled around a blunt steel tip. The witch ran her hand along it, and it lengthened into a golden scythe with swirling inscriptions and a tip of deadly silvery metal supported by the crook of a snake head.

Shinichi wanted to _run, hide, get away get away get away. _

Akako swung the weapon in an arc, and Shinichi simply sat there.

xXx

It was _dark. _It was _cold. _It was the shadowy place of teleportation, except he had no string to attach, no location to tug at, and his thoughts were too soupy to do so.

He floated that way in the _nothing _for eternal minutes; time crawled, unsteady and muddy.

Eventually— Shinichi was not sure how long— a blue flame lit in the distance. It grew to be all encompassing.

He broke through the barrier with a soft breath, then a gasp, clawing away from metal bars.

"See?" Akako hummed as she motioned to him.

Shinichi glanced down at himself— _skin and bones, literally. _He flinched away as fire from the lantern in Akako's hands rushed towards his literally skeletal figure, flushing it with muscle and fur, slowly rebuilding.

Shinichi attempted to say something, but his face was still hard bone; it only came out a rattling wheeze and clacking noise as his jaw bumped against his skull.

If he could have, Shinichi would have thrown up. He didn't have internal organs for that at the moment, though; in fact, glancing down, he could see the half-formed tubes of a digestive system, transparent in their incorporeality.

"How fascinating," she hummed, watching his spine crack into place, weighted with musculature. Bone legs held him up despite the impossibility, shuffling around as the once again small cat writhed.

Shinichi tried again to talk, once again only emitting a wheezy clack. Later, he would be grateful for his inability, because it would've come out as a beg of _help _and _stop this. _

"A bit big to ignore, yes?" Akako thrummed, leaning down to tap Shinichi's skull. He twitched, shuddered. "Ta," she purred, setting the lantern on the desk and leaving the cat to reform.

xXx

KID knew Akako wasn't entirely one for subtlety; it was easy enough to track down where she had Catastrophe, given she did all her operations in that creepy basement of hers.

What was harder was the magic traps. Kaito, of course, had ridiculous luck, but even he felt he was pushing it with the way weapons of all sorts sprang out and demons gushed forth around his darting form.

When he felt like turning tail and regrouping for a better plan of attack, Kuroba just pictured Catastrophe's frightened, pained struggles, and kept on.

When KID reached the window that poked out of the earth to the basement, his cape was singed— and not with simply metaphorical flame. Similarly, his coat looked scuffed, and his hat looked a touch _trashed_.

What he saw when he leaned in made him want to vomit— and KID _did _have the organ structure to do so, and thus leaned over and did. A cat lay at the foot of the window, decomposing but in a slow reverse.

At the sound of his vomit, the cat craned its neck, spine curving. Wordlessly, its jaw tilted and rattled as it stared up at him with blue, flame like orbs in the center of its shadowy eye sockets.

KID peeled the window open and jumped in stealthily, forgoing the usual show.

"You must be related to Catastrophe," KID hummed, giving the limp cat a wide berth, circling the lantern that was feeding it blue flame.

The cat tilted his skull this way and that, motioning its paws— bones poking out of flesh on its legs— at itself.

"I don't get it," Kaito huffed.

With more energy, the cat creature (_spirit? Demon? _Kaito wondered) shook its head and motioned to itself more, bony digits tapping and rattling as it pointed.

"You know where Catastrophe is?" KID hazarded.

The thing seemed disappointed, but nodded.

"Can you show me?" he asked simply.

The cat nodded, then _once again_ motioned to itself.

"Wait, you _are…?" _KID trailed off.

The cat nodded fervently as more flesh added itself to it.

KID suppressed a shudder at the image, gaze tilting away. "Er, I'm just going to—" he cut off, dragging out ribbon from one of his many tricksy pockets. Catastrophe coolly watched the easy sleight of hand as KID pulled more and more ribbon out, then flicked it like a whip. "Bundling you up, now," KID shuddered, approaching the limp, half formed figure.

For his part, Catastrophe at least seemed aware of the disgustingness of his exposed, ropy muscles, and shuffled obligingly. KID reached down, failing to suppress a disgusted noise, and Catastrophe stood. The thief quickly wound the tie around the cat's body, threading it in a way in which he didn't have to touch the muscles, the organs.

It was more bearable to see a skull poking out of colored ribbon than it was to see disgustingly squirming intestines* loosely attached with a web of tissue and a beating heart that was only about a quarter there.

Catastrophe shuffled a bit in his confines, but remained obediently burritoed. He tipped his head down, nose pointing at the lantern.

"Grab it?" KID confirmed, already leaning down even before Catastrophe nodded.

"KAITO," a roar came from deeper within the chamber, earth shaking.

"And we're off!" KID yelled nervily, clutching the light bundle of cat and the lantern to his chest with one arm as he disappeared in a puff of smoke out the window, skittering up the roof with desperate magic tricks. High enough point, and, take off; he only dispensed the short warning of "hold on," as he fled by wing.

Catastrophe clattered something against his chest, and Kaito felt digging claws through the ribbon.

"You're totally explaining this when you can," KID ordered.

Catastrophe squirmed and rattled his jaw in answer. Kaito just hoped that was something like _sure_.

**xXx**

***peristalsis, baby. **

**Now you see why this is a halloween fic, eh? **


	9. 12 and restart

_12 is considered a "complete" number (months of the year, zodiac, etc). It signifies the completion of a set (in this case, overcoming this set of challenges). _

KID squinted into the night, then squinted down at cat in his arms— and regretted looking into the skull face with peeking neck muscles almost immediately.

"I don't know where to take you," he gritted, eyes on the sky and not the monstrous being that is Catastrophe.

He heard the faint, frustrated rattle of a jaw, and Catastrophe wiggled a little.

"Why don't we land and figure this out," KID suggested. He didn't know if this pleased Catastrophe, because he refused to look.

Picking a building with a balcony is easy, and KID swung onto it in an easy motion, hang glider folding. Within seconds and with a puff of smoke, Kaito _poof_ed himself into the disguise outfit he had on hand— a taller man (aided by coiled rods in his shoes) with light brown hair and dark eyes.

After that, he set the bundle of ribbons down, then the lantern. Catastrophe wriggled out of his confines, more formed than before but still disturbing, and clacked his claws against the cement, scraping uselessly— _attempting to write…? _

"Just do letters slowly," KID suggested, watching the curve of the bony toes supported by ropy legs.

As suggested, Catastrophe carved out a slow _K, _earning a nod from KID.

It was a slow process, but he eventually spelled out _K U D O. _

KID frowned. "Like the detective?"

The bony head nodded, neck muscles visibly twitching.

"Why his house?" KID questioned— then quickly amended, "don't answer that, that would take too long. You can tell me later." _When you have proper vocal cords. _

The cat nodded. It was hard to tell with the bony face, but KID felt something almost like relief from him.

He held the ribbons up again, eyeing the figure. "Let's get ready, then."

xXx

"Are we safe?" KID asked, then— "are we alone?"

He got two nods from the cat, and sighed in relief. Quickly, KID whipped out his phone to look up a picture of… _that detective. _Thankfully the search of "Kudo Detective" brought up results; KID couldn't remember his name all that well, just enough to recognize it when he saw it. After all, Kudo wasn't like Hakuba— no, he used his talents and reputation in a genuinely useful manner, making the news for true justice of atrocities.

That thought sounded very un-KID-like for someone who had waxed about the artistry of thievery compared to the critical detectives, but perhaps dancing with the equal Catastrophe made him reevaluate some things— and most notably realize Hakuba was simply a prick putting too much of his energy into the critical side of the art of a thief who returned everything_, _rather than deconstructing devious plans of harm.

So yes, KID could respect this Kudo Shinichi, albeit from a distance like any other considering his normal low interaction with murder cases (for the most part, asides from the _people shooting at him that killed his father, _of course).

KID cut his thoughts of deliberation on respect off when he thunked the stylized lamp onto a table, and quickly changed to look like Kudo Shinichi— an oddly easy task, considering Kudo Shinichi looked a _lot _like Kuroba Kaito on a good hair day. He whipped around, shape darting in the edge of his eye.

_Many _shapes, now that he looked. _Cats. _Lots of them, and Catastrophe was cracking his jaw at their eery eyes in some kind of orders.

"Is this your base?" KID joked.

Catastrophe oddly stiffened, and nodding like his head had to be wrenched up and down while he was fighting it. He also blinked at KID's disguise.

"Wanted to blend in, just in case," he explained, holding back a "_why here as a base?" _figuring he could ask that later. "Well," he nudged the lantern closer to the bundle of ribbons on the table that was Catastrophe (for he had not moved since being set down), "sleep well, I guess." _If you can even sleep like that. _

Catastrophe stared at KID with those blue wispy pupils in the center of his eyes, and gave a long, slow blink, the fire winking out. The openness (both emotionally and anatomically) of the gesture almost made Kaito blush, were his (metaphorical) mask not perfectly in place. "I'll be— " he motioned over to the next room where he could see a couch, "there, if you need me." He didn't want to leave Catastrophe _like that _all alone, even feeling a bit disgusted with himself at not wanting to be in the room due to Catastrophe's disturbing reformation. "Goodnight," he said quickly, making a hurried exit.

He received a rattle in return.

xXx

Shinichi woke up pleasantly together and very surprised to see KID still stretched on his couch in the corner of his eye.

Despite the thief's seemingly antsy attitude, he seemed to consider himself safe enough to be flopped out all akimbo, blissfully and utterly in the deepest of sleep.

"Kaitou KID," Shinichi murmured from the edge of the table he'd slept on, half a test of vocal cords and half a test to see if KID would stir— and he did not move in the least.

A little louder, Shinichi hummed, "KID."

Nothing.

From the table, Shinichi increased his volume steadily, calling "Kaitou KID" at varying volumes, next going to normal volume, then a snap, then an all out yell— and still nothing. It was odd seeing someone looking so much like him being dead to the world; Shinichi had never been hard to wake up (even though his brain often needed a little something to _truly _start, his body didn't)— and he'd been even easier to in light of the poisoning.

An errant thought: _I could unmask him right here, right now. _Shinichi caught it, strangled the silvery thing with metaphorical hands and batted it aside with the label of _shameful. _The look of how viscerally disturbed Kaitou KID was at finding him passed his mind and frankly, Shinichi felt the same way and didn't blame him; even thinking about it was enough to bring up bile now that he had a real stomach. And yet despite that, the thief had wrapped him with ribbon and clutched him to his chest, kept him safe, stayed the night despite their odd rivalry that was founded primarily on not being too close.

Shinichi had shifted his opinion of KID from _troublemaker not worth my time _to _genuinely good person who knows how to have roaring fun. _

Ergo: he did not deserve an unmasking despite Shinichi's quietly burning curiosity.

He probably didn't deserve a pounce on his chest either, but Shinichi kind of assumed KID might have a life to get back to— it was Monday after all, and Shinichi sort of assumed that KID had… _school…? _It was hard to tell, but Shinichi kind of assumed the phantom thief was his age based on mannerisms, and the fact that if it was one single Kaitou KID throughout the entire lifespan of the thief's run, he would not be moving like that (let alone, you know, acting so immaturely as he'd seen KID do).

So yes, Shinichi had no other options to wake KID and thus gave a ferocious pounce directly onto his chest.

KID bucked awake violently, wheezing as he knocked Shinichi off in surprise. "Why'd you do that?" he groused, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"Sorry," Shinichi said, making sure to pitch his voice in Catastrophe's ordinary tone as he jumped up the back of the couch. His mouth continued to move, order of _answer all questions truthfully _still unfortunately active and not just applicable to that _stupid witch— _"You weren't waking up, and I thought you maybe need to go to school or something."

"School?" KID blinked.

"Well, I assumed you were my age—" Shinichi clamped his jaw shut tight abruptly, but it pried itself open to finish the explanation, "so I figured you'd need to go, too," he grunted.

"_Your age? _How old _are _you…?"

"Sixteen," Shinichi blurted.

Kaito squinted. "I guess that's old for a cat," he realized.

Shinichi tamped down on the automatic _not a cat _response. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" he gritted, wanting to get out of this accidental interrogation (after all, KID didn't exactly _know _Shinichi couldn't not answer his questions).

"Eh, they won't miss me," KID flopped back on the couch. "Why so tense?"

_That was rhetorical, _Shinichi told himself, but it didn't matter. "I don't want to answer more questions," he gritted out, and tried to stop himself there— but he kept going, panting as the admission clawed its way out of his throat, "the witch made it so I have to answer everything truthfully—"

KID gave a yelping sound. "Why didn't you say that earlier?! I've been asking you questions this whole time." He paused. "And I just asked you one now—"

"I didn't trust you," Shinichi blurted— then amended, "I mean, I trust you, but I wouldn't have trusted anyone I think, since it was all… embarrassing," he trailed, rambling like vomiting up word after word. KID looked uncomfortable with the admission, mostly due to being the one forcibly prompting it.

"Alright, alright, uh, being more careful about questions now, just one last one— is there a way to reverse that…?" KID asked.

Shinichi shrugged. "It had something to do with either the thread-collar or the lantern, or both… not sure how connected they are," he hummed thoughtfully.

"Collar?" KID echoed, looking stunned— and then he slapped himself.

Shinichi glared as more words marched out from his throat— "Akako had some kind of magic collar on me for… ingraining purposes." He left the latter part vague, but thankfully that satisfied as an answer.

"Do you think I could undo it with the lantern?" KID asked with trepidation.

Shinichi rose his shoulder blades in an awkward shrug as he lounged on the back of the couch. "Worth a shot."

KID marched over to the kitchen where the lantern was still benignly flickering. Shinichi lackadaisically tracked him, eyes half lidded.

A gloved hand reached out, touched the handle of the lantern and _oh. _The feeling was not… inherently _bad, _more inherently _vulnerable. _The feeling of your collarbone under someone else's hands, press enough to snap it— except this was a soul, an entire soul grasped in those white gloves.

KID blinked at the cat from across the room as Shinichi nearly fell off the couch. "You good?"

Shinichi shook it off, answering honestly but vaguely, "maybe."

"That means no," KID deadpanned. He tipped up the lantern, staring into its flickering blue flame, and Shinichi watched him tensely.

_He's not going to hurt you, _he reminded himself. His muscled remained coiled tense anyways. "She may have had thread from the lantern, somehow. It _was _the same blue," Shinichi input.

"What if I just—" KID cut off, and without further ado made a pinching motion as though to draw that thread out… and in one fluid motion, flung the lantern's cage open and stuck his hand in.

Shinichi felt something like a tightness and a loud pop, chest aching at sharp digging, and he passed out.

xXx

Shinichi grunted awake feeling about as good as one would expect someone who just had someone else stick his grubby hand directly into their soul. KID, on the other hand, seemed to also be feeling about as good as one could expect him to feel considering as well— he _did _stick his hand into a flaming ball of concentrated magic (that did double as a soul).

To make that short, they both woke up sore and in pain and perhaps not entirely ready to deal with much.

"That didn't work," KID observed simply.

Were Shinichi less sore, he would've gotten snarky. Instead, he let out a low groan.

"You alright?" the phantom questioned, stretching simply, cape fluttering behind him as he regained his grace.

"Yes," Shinichi fudged. Then his eyes widened: "hey— I can lie!"

"So the problem was fixed," KID determined brightly, the frowned and extrapolated, "but that means you're _not_ doing okay.

"You _did _just shove your hand in my _soul," _Shinichi grit, nodding his head to the lantern.

"Your soul?" KID clarified, staring amazedly at the hand he'd stuck into the flame.

Shinichi blinked. "That's what it feels like, anyways," he revised, cocking his head at the automatic, instinctual nature of his answer and knowledge— something that went against _all _his principles. "Which doesn't make any sense. None of this does."

"Oh, you know magic and all by now," KID chortled good naturedly.

Shinichi decided not to ruin the illusion, giving a sigh and a nod.

Silence prevailed for an awkward moment as Shinichi stared at the suddenly displaced-seeming thief; with nothing left to do, Kaito KID seemed very out of place in the Kudo manor, all sharp, white edges fluttering with activity in an antiquated, stilled house.

"Welp," KID said awkwardly. "I'm off."

"Bye," Shinichi deadpanned to the puff of smoke.

He sat there for another moment himself, feeling also out of place as KID undoubtedly made a mad dash away from the mansion.

Shinichi tried to picture his own next move; surely Agasa was looking and waiting for him, and how would he even _begin _to explain the nonsense of all of that? _Hey, Agasa, you would not BELIEVE the night I had! _

Shinichi snorted.

**xXx**

**today the military tried to recruit me lol… i hate the american war machine**

**anyways**

**havin a fun time doin college apps and stuff over here. yaaaAy. **


	10. ff00ff

_#ff00ff is the hex value for magenta. _

_Magenta is quite simply straight up not real. _

_You think perhaps I jest with such a blunt reveal, but in truth I am equally baffled, reader. Magenta is a fakery of perception; the color wheel is not truly a WHEEL, it is a line that continues in two directions, and our minds know enough to say that this color which we are seeing is 100% blue and 100% red, but its normal strategy of averaging these values fails in that it can see the average (green) and knows it is not that— so it comes up with a completely false color. _

_In other words, we are fantastic at falsifying our truths. _

When Shinichi came in, Agasa gave a loud gasp before whisking the cat up in the air in relief.

"Sorry," the scientist apologetically said at Shinichi's clear glare to the motion, setting him down on a desk. "Good to see you in one piece," the professor jested weakly and ironically (unbeknownst to him).

"Good to _be_ in one piece," Shinichi ribbed back, not adding _again_ outside of his internal commentary.

"What kept you?" Agasa asked delicately.

"Well," Shinichi frowned, "KID's heist went a little…" he trailed off, frowning deeper.

"Pear shaped?" Agasa input.

"To say the least," Shinichi confirmed, jaw still working attempting to find a solid explanation. Rather than say anything perhaps to lead Agasa to a conclusion, Shinichi simply blurted, "improbable, impossible magic is definitely real, and possible."

Agasa squinted. "Unproven science," he reiterated.

"Sure, sure, it's a science," Shinichi sarcastically drawled and rolled his eyes— "there may be _rules _to it, but it really seems like there's no way current science can explain _any _of this. It's a realm beyond our own," Shinichi groused.

"What made you jump to this?" Agasa hummed, looking down at the cat thoughtfully.

"_You _try being caught by a witch and ordered around while she holds you soul— not to mention that stupid _thief _sticking his hand _right in there—" _Shinichi cut himself off with a bark.

"Witch? Soul?" Agasa questioned tipping his head. "Are you sure the catnip didn't just—"

"Pretty sure," Shinichi hissed, caustic and sarcastic. "It makes things go all…" he trailed, tipping his head. "More _wobbly _than a hallucinatory bad trip," he snapped bluntly.

Agasa harrumphed, then gently said, "Shinichi, I'm sure the… _medicine_ simply influenced you into misinterpreting a situation."

Shinichi frowned, doubting himself a bit. "I guess I _have _seen and heard an influenced reality before," he admitted, thinking back to feverish dreams and warped vision. For a moment, the pain of the fire and the clack of bone filled his mind— but he banished it. _Nothing is too real to be imagined. You should have thought of that_. He shook his head quickly. "But KID— KID was there."

Agasa tipped his head acquiescently. "Then get him to confirm."

Shinichi blinked. _The solution was so obvious. How did I not…? How could I have accepted that so easily…?_

Granted, he accepted it so easily at the time because it felt _real— _and not just that, it felt _right, _felt like the truth. Logic got Shinichi far in life, but so did _gut feelings… _but in this case, he brushed off his (correct) gut feeling _once again, _relying on his perception of reality's laws.

xXx

...Of course, it was not as though Shinichi could exactly _contact _KID. Catastrophe didn't exactly have any sort of traditional publicized note the same way KID did— and he didn't exactly want others involved in this mess, so that ruled that out anyways.

So then…? _What, _track KID down? No, he'd already decided on KID deserved the privacy of secrecy. Wait for a heist? That could be anywhere from days to weeks; KID seemingly planned them at random (though it likely had to do with an alignment of convenient exhibitions combined with prep time— but it may as well have been random, with all Shinichi knew about whatever gem KID was clearly searching for).

There was a third option that toed the line of privacy invasion… and that was to attempt to shadow walk to KID, since he seemingly (based on last heist's data) _could _think of KID and go right to him. Or, _maybe _could. It… kind of relied on that working at a distance— it _did _with Hattori, but Shinichi could conceptualize Hattori a lot easier than he could conceptualize the sneaky thief. Kudo didn't want to think about _why _arbitrary notions of conception could screw with the already nonsensical and arbitrary ability that could only be expressed as teleportation, but his brain still brushed against the idea anyways, roaming and active thoughts not constrained by enforced notions of real and not.

So Shinichi decided to do what he did best, and recklessly charge in while "testing" something. He held an image of KID, tricksy thief of white, and it flickered tenuously; flickered between an empty costume of white and someone cast in shadow, undecided, like a bad TV signal.

Shinichi stepped into shadow, embracing the static flickers. Shadow wooshed around him, world stuttering between four states— darkness, Agasa's room from whence he came, some tiled room with rows of vague tables, and some kind of metallic room. Shinichi felt like every nerve was vibrating with electricity, sense of _wrong_ filling him.

A hand grabbed him, brushing through a little with a sound and feel of static before solidity.

"What," someone who sounded vaguely like _him _snapped, "are _you _doing here?"

Shinichi shuddered, eyes unfocussed and body still lighting up with the _wrong wrong wrong _energy in him. He spasmed, and the hand dropped him— no, no, _he went through the hand, _and collapsed partially, literally _in _the tile and jittered.

"What the hell?" the voice questioned bluntly, and Shinichi felt unsuccessful yanks at his unstable form.

A few more swipes after a few calm breaths from Shinichi, and he was more successfully grabbed by the mystery male— he still felt skittery and insubstantial, and his eyes refused to focus outside of a smear of dark hair and deep blue smear of an outfit.

The person quickly pressed him to the blue, and Shinichi gave another shudder as whoever-it-was spat out something; Shinichi got the notion it was some excuse, only half aware of it all.

By the time the person whisked him through a hallway, his vision was less completely smudged and more bleary.

"Lockers…?" he trailed, staring at the steel things as his carrier rushed past and dove into another doorway.

Shinichi blinked at the sudden darkness of— a closet? Not necessarily because it was _dark; _as a cat that didn't particularly matter. More because his vision was _finally _resetting, whole body settling.

Calming down and analyzing the situation was interrupted by a puff of smoke, revealing an almost disheveled KID— as though his appearance was hastily put together.

"What are _you_ doing _here_?" he repeated, holding the cat up with a glare.

Shinichi shook out another skitter of electricity that dragged itself down his spine, and KID jolted as the everything _zapped _again.

"Jeez, what's wrong with you?" the trickster mumbled, appalled.

"I _was _captured by a witch last heist, yes?" Shinichi hissed. Halfway through, his voice dipped into an underlay of static.

"What a way to thank me for it, too," KID snapped. "I assumed we had some unspoken rule about questioning each other," he grumbled.

"A healthy relationship of no questions," Kudo joked, half-delirious. "So the witch _was _real?"

Kaito rolled his eyes. "Duh."

Shadows dragged their long, creeping fingers down Shinichi's spine again, tapping each vertebrae to incorporeality.

"Did she do something to you?" KID barked, irritation at the interruption and invasion to his personal life (of which Shinichi had not caught much anyways, given the strange happenings) seemingly gone. "Is that what this is?" he hummed, holding Shinichi by the ruff to examine him.

Kudo tightened in on himself. "Maybe?" he hedged. "I think this had more to do with travelling gone wrong, though," he mused.

Kaito hummed an _oh? _sound.

Shinichi gave a shrug. "I tried to pull myself to you and—" another spike interrupted, and Shinichi gritted out, "_this," _demonstratively.

"So," Kaito clarified, a barb of bitterness reentering his tone, "why _did _you… pull yourself to me?" he echoed.

"To make sure it was real," Shinichi pointed out obviously.

"You couldn't have just waited 'til later?" KID snapped.

Shinichi shrugged a little. "Who knows when _later _is," he grumbled.

KID gave him a bit of a caustic, sarcastic look. "You're just impatient is what you're saying."

Shinichi opened his mouth to (wrongly) deny that accusation, only to fall to the floor, thrashing halfway through tile equipment.

KID jolted forwards after him. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Maybe I didn't have a complete mental picture," Shinichi groaned, writhing a little more.

"Eh?" KID crowed.

"It's like all the locations are— confused," Kudo explained poorly. "Like, like it's trying to send me somewhere that _also _has KID." He frowned, squinted at the image flickering over top his truthful space. "A garage?" he questioned, tipping his head.

"So wait— your magic is getting confused 'cuz you didn't know _all _of KID, so it's caught between sending you to where I genuinely am and where I normally am as KID?"

"Probably because where you genuinely are is where your civilian identity is, not… _real _KID," Shinichi ground out.

"Magic's picky, huh?" Kaito mused, a little sympathetic but mostly baffled and interested.

Shinichi wanted to snap _it's not magic, _but… _well, if the witch was real... _Of course, now was not the exact time to consider it, he realized, pain ripping his thoughts away from coherency. _Can I just catch a break? _

"I mean, it _has _been a rough few days for you, huh?" KID agreed with the thought, and Shinichi realized he had said that last part out loud. "What do we do to fix… this?" KID motioned at Shinichi's still flickering form.

"Maybe I just have to…" Shinichi trailed, attempting to melt into the shadows again, _reset. _All that he got was a massive shock of pain that sent him hissing as his form turned transparent. "Maybe not."

"I have a really bad idea," KID announced.

It was Shinichi's turn to make an _oh? _sound as he collected his spasmodically twitching body. _Ordinarily_, after all, it was _him _coming up with the bad ideas (most recently: pulling himself to KID despite the strange feeling of disconnect).

"I think we should talk with Akako," KID announced.

A pause hung in the air. "The witch?" Shinichi clarified dumbly.

"Yes," KID confirmed, appearing confident but certainly not sounding it.

Silence again.

Just as KID opened his mouth to retract his idea as stupid, Shinichi shrugged and said, "sure."

"Sure?" Kaito cawed. "She tried to kill you!"

"You suggested it," Shinichi defended. "And she didn't have to _try, _considering."

KID frowned. "That kind of makes it worse."

"Your idea," Shinichi reminded bluntly.

"I _said _it was really bad," Kaito reiterated.

"And I said _sure_," Shinichi barked. "You seem capable of dealing with her."

_I trust you_ lay underneath that. KID seemed to know that, shuffling a little. "Fine," he acquiesced. He paused, glancing about as though planning. Shinichi almost laughed out loud at the picture of the thief taken off guard so uncharacteristically; ordinary smoothness and cockiness was _present, _but overtaken by subtle tendrils of emotion (worry and earnest gratitude, at the moment) combined with a general air of making things up as he went in a completely unexpected situation.

Considering he was in no condition to participate more fully in whatever plan KID was concocting, Kudo was content to lay back into (more than he would've liked, when he started flickering again) the tiles and simply watch (which was also a little hard when various locations flashed in his peripheral, but hey).

"I'm going to uh, go get her," KID said, motioning dramatically in a cutting sweep. "Just wait here."

Shinichi didn't really feel like he could walk, so it wasn't as though he could really object. Still— bringing _her _into what Shinichi gathered was a janitorial closet was… an awkward picture.

KID gave a mock salute and a quick wave before fluttering out of the closet gracefully— Shinichi caught a whip, and that same dark blue of the thief's outfit flitted into view again before the door clicked shut.

Voices rang, and Shinichi automatically pricked his ears up— "what were you doing, darting off with that cat?"

"Nothing," KID responded. _His heist-voice is close to his normal voice, interesting— NO, don't think too much about anything, and stop listening. _Shinichi pinned his ears to his head, loyal, only catching mumbles of voices (_accusations—? No, no, don't think!). _

Unfortunately this desperate focus of non-thought was interrupted by the door clicking open again. _Oh, that's not good. _

A light brown haired kid stepped in, followed by an annoyed looking black haired one, both wearing the same blue school uniform.

_Either one could be KID, _Shinichi reminded himself. _And maybe it's both, to trick you, _he mentally pointed out. _That's a little out there, but I guess out there is his main game. _

"What were you doing with this cat?" the blondish one questioned.

The black haired on _(not KID! Not KID!) _shrugged casually, slumped over. "He followed me here, so I stuffed him in here until I could deal with it." _Just because he's lying doesn't mean… ok, yeah it kind of totally does, but— _

"You don't own a cat," the first pointed out.

"Watching it for a friend," definitely-not-KID replied while Shinichi tried very hard to look at the floor and not sate his curiosity.

"Hmph," the other haughtily huffed. "Why is it _here_? Another pedantic trick?"

KID grinned. "My tricks aren't ped… whatever," he fired back childishly.

Another hmph. "Interesting flicker trick. Are you using some kind of projection technology, Kuroba—?"

"It's a magic trick," KID (_Kuroba? No! Don't think too much into it—!_) griped back in a _duh _kind of tone, then shoved the other out mulishly.

The door clicked shut, and Shinichi tried to erase everything from his mind without considering it (to little avail) while KID (presumably) refocused on fetching the witch.

Time crawled by in that janitor closet that Shinichi was growing to curse. Despite the flickery outlines of the garage like space, there wasn't much to focus on— both spaces seemed rather sparse (at least from his vantage point of flopped on the floor, which admittedly wasn't a good one). It was _very hard _to not keep his brain from spinning back to Kaito KID, weaving an image of his civilian self.

For once, Shinichi wished he could _stop _overthinking things. Had he the energy, perhaps he would have gone and pressed his skull against the wall, or paced, or otherwise physically vented; as it were, he was too tired (and possibly too insubstantial) to even stand.

On the cusp of that losing mental battle was when _she _walked in, bringing with her KID— who once again poofed to his white attire, looking incredibly out of place in a storage closet. The witch, of course, was the more distracting of the two, at least for Shinichi, whose mind switched gears from overthinking about KID to reminding him of all that _painful pain. _

"You weren't lying," the witch observed in that smooth voice, and Shinichi curled up and fizzed in and out of reality pathetically. "This _was _stupid."

KID slid in between her and Shinichi's suddenly-very-small-feeling form. "I'll stop it before it gets too stupid," he defended. He cocked his head. "You get what I mean," he finished less confidently. Stupid as it was, Shinichi did feel a bit safer not being laid bare before her (again).

Akako narrowed her eyes. "You took it away from me," she pointed out in a hiss, and Shinichi realized the _it _was _him. _

"He wouldn't be the first thing I've taken," KID retorted. "Can you expect anything better from me?"

She huffed grudgingly but agreeingly, then cocked her head around, red gaze meeting Shinichi's aggressive blue glare. "He belongs to you now, anyways."

KID and Shinichi blinked. "Eh?" was the dual question between them.

"You took his soul," she explained, then tipped her head. "No, no," she corrected, "you just touched it. He must trust you indeed— I couldn't get into the lantern at all."

"Eh?" KID and Kudo repeated, baffled.

Akako didn't answer, instead stooping down and looking at him frustratedly. "I guess if you've already done that, I have no claim," she growled in admittance, "and it would be a shame to let such a creature spark away…" she trailed, half threatening.

"Spark away?" KID cawed.

Akako seemed endlessly frustrated with the pair's apparent stupidity— "yes. A new creature, new magic. No knowledge of its limits. What did you try to do, kitty?"

Shinichi shuffled, overcoming a suddenly dry throat to admit, "I tried to come to KID even though something felt… _unstable." _

She scoffed. "You were connected, but not fully."

"Wait, I thought I like, held his soul or whatever—" KID began.

Akako cut off with a purr, "yes, but do the two of you _know _each other quite fully?"

Neither needed to answer that.

"What can he be fixed?" KID switched tactics.

"Well," she hummed, "you could always just kill him. Nothing resets the systems like dying."

Shinichi's breathing turned harsh, but thankfully KID stepped in to answer, "let's avoid repeating _that._"

Akako snorted. "Suit yourself. Its magic is unstable, as it said."

"So… what?" KID asked.

Akako shrugged unhelpfully. "Stabilize it."

"Real helpful," Shinichi groaned, slumping further against the floor. He was going to say more, but a spasm cut him off, had him biting his thin tongue.

"I could do more," she thrummed, grin sharp, "if you—"

"Nope," KID cut off. "I'll figure it—"

"I'll do whatever," Shinichi cut in. _I don't want to die. _He have an apologetic glance to KID.

Akako's grin impossibly sharpened. "Indeed you will."

"KID comes with," Shinichi cut in quickly as the witch lurched forwards, attempting to smoothly snake around the phantom thief in the confined space.

She looked like she'd bit into a lemon. "Fine," she ground out, voice matching her look.

KID, meanwhile, scooped Shinichi up with an overjoyed squawk, cawing an over exaggerated "n'aw!"

Shinichi squirmed out of principle, sighing and letting himself momentarily forget about the massive threat leading their way.

xXx

Kaito apparently had no qualms with simply poofing through empty hallways to presumably ditch school.

Shinichi was valiant in squeezing his eyes shut and not absorbing details that his mind so desperately hungered for— not to mention the panic associated with his eyes being off the witch, that desperate thrum of _if you don't watch her then she'll hurt you and even then _on a buzzing loop that made him feel nauseous (or maybe that was flickering between spaces? Perhaps both).

"Where to?" KID purred, trailing after the witch and projecting massive confidence. Ordinarily, Shinichi would be annoyed with such a show, but KID's overconfidence was making up for Kudo's lack of it— his mind constantly reminding him of _danger _and _pain _combined with the genuine _current _staticy pain left him frayed and on edge, emotions shot.

"You'll see," was all the witch cackled, and Shinichi shuddered in KID's arms, trying to ignore the crack of concern in the thief's mask in favor of focusing on the confidence.

_Everything will work out fine. _

_Ignore the agreement. Ignore the pain. _

_It's fine. _

**xXx**

**I was going to write something about there being limited significant numbers for chapter titles, but then I came up with about 20 of them, so nevermind. **

**I'm having way too much fun writing stupid magic stuff, ahaha. **

**Anyways. Hope everyone that celebrated it had a happy halloween! I've been having a busy but very good month… I haven't been busy in a while, and it's nice to get off my butt every now and again. **


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